THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


Shelburne  Essays 


By 

Paul  Elmer  More 


First  Series 


"  Before  we  have  an  American  literature,  we  must  have  an 
American  criticism," — J.  R,  Lowell. 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and  London 

^bc  fviiichcrbochcr   presd 
1909 


Copyright,   1904 

BY 

PAUL  ELMER  MORE 


Published,  September,  1Q04 
Reprinted,  December,  1904  ;  January,  1906 
December,  1906 ;  October,  1907  ;  May,  1909 


Ube  Knicfiecboclter  fiteee,  l^ew  IQoch 


ADVERTISEMENT 

All  but  one  of  these  essays  were  written  for  magazines 
or  for  the  daily  press,  and  thanks  are  due  to  the  pub- 
lishers of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  the  Independent,  the 
International  Quarterly,  the  Sewanee  Review,  and  the 
New  York  Evening  Post,  for  permission  to  reprint. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A  Hermit's  Notes  on  Thoreau  .  .  .  .  i 
The  Solitude  of  Nathaniei,  Hawtsorne;  .  22 
The  Origins  of  Hawthorne  and  Poe  .  .  51 
The  Infi,uence  of  Emerson       .       .       .       .71 

The  Spirit  of  Cari,yle 85 

The  Science  of  Engi^ish  Verse         .       .       .103 
Arthur  Symons  :  The  Two  Ii,i,usions        .        .122 
The  Epic  of  Ireland    ......    147 

Two  Poets  of  the  Irish  Movement  .  .  ,  177 
Tolstoy;    or,   The   Ancient    Feud   between 

Philosophy  and  Art 193 

The  Religious  Ground  of  Humanitarianism    .    225 


SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 


A  HERMIT'S  NOTES  ON  THOREAU 

Near  the  secluded  village  of  Shelburue  that 
lies  along  the  peaceful  valley  of  the  Androscoggin, 
I  took  upon  myself  to  live  two  years  as  a  hermit 
after  a  mild  Epicurean  fashion  of  my  own.  Three 
maiden  aunts  wagged  their  heads  ominously;  mj'- 
nearest  friend  inquired  cautiously  whether  there 
was  any  taint  of  insanity  in  the  family;  an  old 
grey-haired  lady,  a  veritable  saint  who  had  not 
been  soured  by  her  many  deeds  of  charit)',  admon- 
ished me  on  the  utter  selfishness  and  godlessness 
of  such  a  proceeding.  But  I  clung  heroically  to 
my  resolution.  Summer  tourists  in  that  pleasant 
valley  may  still  see  the  little  red  house  among  the 
pines, — empty  now,  I  believe;  and  I  dare  say 
gaudy  coaches  still  draw  up  at  the  door,  as  they 
used  to  do,  when  the  gaudier  bonnets  and  hats 
exchanged  wondering  remarks  on  the  cabalistic 
inscription  over  the  lintel,  or  spoke  condescend- 
ingly to  the  great  dog  lying  on  the  steps.  As  for 
the  hermit  within,  having  found  it  impossible  to 
I 


2  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

educe  any  meaning  from  the  tangled  habits  of 
mankind  while  he  himself  was  whirled  about 
in  the  imbroglio,  he  had  determined  to  try  the 
efficacy  of  undisturbed  meditation  at  a  distance. 
So  deficient  had  been  his  education  that  he  was 
actually  better  acquainted  with  the  aspirations 
and  emotions  of  the  old  dwellers  on  the  Ganges 
than  with  those  of  the  modern  toilers  by  the 
Hudson  or  the  Potomac.  He  had  been  deafened 
by  the  "indistinguishable  roar"  of  the  streets, 
and  could  make  no  sense  of  the  noisy  jargon  of 
the  market  place.  But — shall  it  be  confessed  ? — 
although  he  discovered  many  things  during  his 
contemplative  sojourn  in  the  wilderness,  and 
learned  that  the  attempt  to  criticise  and  not  to 
create  literature  was  to  be  his  labour  in  this  world, 
nevertheless  he  returned  to  civilisation  as  ignor- 
ant, alas,  of  its  meaning  as  when  he  left  it. 

However,  it  is  not  my  intention  to  justify  the 
saintly  old  lady's  charge  of  egotism  by  telling  the 
story  of  my  exodus  to  the  desert;  that,  perhaps, 
may  come  later  and  at  a  more  suitable  time.  I 
wish  now  only  to  record  the  memories  of  one  per- 
fect day  in  June,  when  woods  and  mountains  were 
as  yet  a  new  delight. 

The  fresh  odours  of  morning  were  still  swaying 
in  the  air  when  I  set  out  on  this  particular  day; 
and  my  steps  turned  instinctively  to  the  great  pine 
forest,  called  the  Cathedral  Woods,  that  filled  the 
valley  and  climbed  the  hill  slopes  behind  my 
house.      There,   many  long  roads  that  are  laid 


THOREAU  3 

down  in  no  map  wind  hither  and  thither  among 
the  trees,  whose  leafless  trunks  tower  into  the 
sky  and  then  meet  in  evergreen  arches  overhead. 
There, 

The  tumult  of  the  times  disconsolate 

never  enters,  and  no  noise  of  the  world  is  heard 
save  now  and  then,  in  winter,  the  ringing  strokes 
of  the  woodchopper  at  his  cruel  task.  How  many 
times  I  have  walked  those  quiet  cathedral  aisles, 
while  my  great  dog  paced  faithfully  on  before! 
Underfoot  the  dry,  purple-hued  moss  was  stretched 
like  a  royal  carpet;  and  at  intervals  a  glimpse  of 
the  deep  sky,  caught  through  an  aperture  in  the 
groined  roof,  reminded  me  of  the  other  world, 
and  carried  my  thoughts  still  farther  from  the 
desolating  memories  of  this  life.  Nothing  but 
pure  odours  were  there,  sweeter  than  cloistral  in- 
cense; and  murmurous  voices  of  the  pines,  more 
harmonious  than  the  chanting  of  trained  choris- 
ters; and  in  the  heart  of  the  wanderer  nothing 
but  tranquillity  and  passionless  peace^. 

Often  now  the  recollection  of  those  scenes  comes 
floating  back  upon  his  senses  when,  in  the  wake- 
ful seasons  of  a  summer  night,  he  hears  the  wind 
at  work  among  the  trees;  even  in  barren  city 
streets  some  sound  or  spectacle  can  act  upon  him 
as  a  spell,  banishing  for  a  moment  the  hideous 
contention  of  commerce,  and  placing  him  beneath 
the  restful  shadows  of  the  pines.  May  his  under- 
standing cease  its  function,  and  his  heart  forget  to 
feel,  when  the  memory  of  those  days  has  utterly 


4  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

left  him  and  he  walks  in  the  world  without  this 
consolation  of  remembered  peace. 

Nor  can  I  recollect  that  my  mind,  in  these 
walks,  was  much  called  away  from  contemplation 
by  the  petty  curiosities  of  the  herbalist  or  bird- 
lorist,  for  I  am  not  one  zealously  addicted  to 
scrutinising  into  the  minuter  secrets  of  Nature.  It 
never  seemed  to  me  that  a  flower  was  made  sweeter 
by  knowing  the  construction  of  its  ovaries,  or  as- 
sumed a  new  importance  when  I  learned  its  trivial 
or  scientific  name.  The  wood  thrush  and  the 
veery  sing  as  melodiously  to  the  uninformed  as  to 
the  subtly  curious.  Indeed,  I  sometimes  think  a 
little  ignorance  is  wholesome  in  our  communion 
with  Nature,  until  we  are  ready  to  part  with  her 
altogether.  She  is  feminine  in  this  as  in  other 
respects,  and  loves  to  shroud  herself  in  illusions, 
as  the  Hindus  taught  in  their  books.  For  they 
called  her  Maya,  the  very  person  and  power  of 
deception,  whose  sway  over  the  beholder  must 
end  as  soon  as  her  mystery  is  penetrated. 

Dear  as  the  sound  of  the  wood  thrush's  note 
still  is  to  my  ears,  something  of  charm  and  allure- 
ment has  gone  from  it  since  I  have  become  inti- 
mate with  the  name  and  habits  of  the  bird.  As 
a  child  born  and  reared  in  the  city,  that  wild, 
ringing  call  was  perfectly  new  and  strange  to  me 
when,  one  early  dawn,  I  first  heard  it  during  a 
visit  to  the  Delaware  Water  Gap.  To  me,  whose 
ears  had  grown  familiar  only  with  the  rumble  of 
paved  streets,  the  sound  was  like  a  reiterated  un- 


THOREAU  5 

earthly  summons  inviting  me  from  my  narrow 
prison  existence  out  into  a  wide  and  unexplored 
world  of  impulse  and  adventure.  Long  after- 
wards I  learned  the  name  of  the  songster  whose 
note  had  made  so  strong  an  impression  on  my 
childish  senses,  but  still  I  associate  the  song  with 
the  grandiose  scenery,  with  the  sheer  forests  and 
streams  and  the  rapid  river  of  the  Water  Gap.  I 
was  indeed  almost  a  man — though  the  confession 
may  sound  incredible  in  these  days — before  I  again 
heard  the  wood  thrush's  note,  and  my  second  ad- 
venture impressed  me  almost  as  profoundly  as  the 
first.  In  the  outer  suburbs  of  the  city  where  my 
home  had  always  been,  I  was  walking  one  day 
with  a  brother,  when  suddenly  out  of  a  grove  of 
laurel  oaks  sounded,  clear  and  triumphant,  the 
note  which  I  remembered  so  well,  but  which  had 
come  to  have  to  my  imagination  the  unreality  and 
mystery  of  a  dream  of  long  ago.  Instantly  my 
heart  leapt  within  me.  "It  is  the  fateful  sum- 
mons once  more!  "  I  cried;  and,  with  my  com- 
panion who  was  equally  ignorant  of  bird-lore,  I 
ran  into  the  grove  to  discover  the  wild  trumpeter. 
That  was  a  strange  chase  in  the  fading  twilight, 
while  the  unknown  songster  led  us  on  from  tree 
to  tree,  ever  deeper  into  the  woods.  Many  times 
we  saw  him  on  one  of  the  lower  boughs,  but  could 
not  for  a  long  while  bring  ourselves  to  believe 
that  so  wondrous  a  melody  shonld  proceed  from 
so  plain  a  minstrel.  And  at  last,  when  we  had 
satisfied  ourselves  of  his  identity,  and  the  night 


6  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

had  fallen,  we  came  out  into  the  road  with  a 
strange  solemnity  hanging  over  us.  Our  ears  had 
been  opened  to  the  unceasing  harmonies  of  crea- 
tion, and  our  eyes  had  been  made  aware  of  the 
endless  drama  of  natural  life.  We  had  been 
initiated  into  the  lesser  mysteries;  and  if  the 
sacred  pageantry  was  not  then,  and  never  was 
to  be,  perfectly  clear  to  our  understanding,  the 
imagination  was  nevertheless  awed  and  purified. 
If  the  knowledge  and  experience  of  years  have 
made  me  a  little  more  callous  to  these  deeper  in- 
fluences, at  least  I  have  not  deliberately  closed 
the  door  to  them  by  incautious  prying.  Perhaps 
a  long  course  of  wayward  reading  has  taught  me 
to  look  upon  the  world  with  eyes  quite  different 
from  those  of  the  modern  exquisite  searchers  into 
Nature.  I  remember  the  story  of  Prometheus, 
and  think  his  punishment  is  typical  of  the  penalty 
that  falls  upon  those  who  grasp  at  powers  and 
knowledge  not  intended  for  mankind, —  some 
nemesis  of  a  more  material  loneliness  and  a  more 
barren  pride  torturing  them  because  they  have 
turned  from  human  knowledge  to  an  alien  and 
forbidden  sphere.  lyike  Prometheus,  they  shall 
in  the  end  cry  out  in  vain : — 

O  air  divine,  and  O  swift-winged  winds ! 
Ye  river  fountains,  and  thou  myriad-twinkling 
Laughter  of  ocean  waves  !     O  mother  earth  ! 
And  thou,  O  all-discerning  orb  o'  the  sun  ! — 
To  you,  I  cry  to  you  ;  behold  what  I, 
A  god,  endure  of  evil  from  the  gods. 


THOREAU  7 

Nor  is  the  tale  of  Prometheus  alone  in  teaching 
this  lesson  of  prudence,  nor  was  Greece  the  only 
land  of  antiquity  where  reverence  was  deemed 
more  salutary  than  curiosity.  The  myth  of  the 
veiled  Isis  passed  in  those  days  from  people  to 
people,  and  was  everywhere  received  as  a  S3'mbol 
of  the  veil  of  illusion  about  Nature,  which  no  man 
might  lift  with  impunity.  And  the  same  idea 
was,  if  anything,  intensified  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
The  common  people,  and  the  Church  as  well, 
looked  with  horror  on  such  scholars  as  Pope 
Gerbert,  who  was  thought,  for  his  knowledge  of 
Nature,  to  have  sold  himself  to  the  devil;  and  on 
such  discoverers  as  Roger  Bacon,  whose  wicked 
searching  into  forbidden  things  cost  him  fourteen 
years  in  prison.  And  even  in  modern  times  did 
not  the  poet  Blake  say:  "I  fear  Wordsworth  loves 
nature,  and  nature  is  the  work  of  the  Devil.  The 
Devil  is  in  us  as  far  as  we  are  nature"  ?  It  has 
remained  for  an  age  of  scepticism  to  substitute 
investigation  for  awe.  After  all,  can  any  course 
of  study  or  open-air  pedagogics  bring  us  into  real 
communion  with  the  world  about  us?  I  fear 
much  of  the  talk  about  companionship  with  Na- 
ture that  pervades  our  summer  life  is  little  better 
than  cant  and  self-deception,  and  he  best  under- 
stands the  veiled  goddess  who  most  frankly  admits 
her  impenetrable  secrecy.  The  peace  that  comes 
to  us  from  contemplating  the  vast  panorama  spread 
out  before  us  is  due  rather  to  the  sense  of  a  great 
passionless  power  entirely  out  of  our  domain  thau 


8  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

to  any  real  intimacy  with  the  hidden  deity.  It 
was  John  Woolman,  the  famous  New  Jersey 
Quaker,  who  wrote,  during  a  journey  through 
the  wilderness  of  Pennsylvania:  *'  In  my  travel- 
ling on  the  road,  I  often  felt  a  cry  rise  from  the 
centre  of  my  mind,  thus,  'O  Lord,  I  am  a  stranger 
on  the  earth,  hide  not  thy  face  from  me.'  " 

But  I  forget  that  I  am  myself  travelling  on  the 
road;  and  all  this  long  disquisition  is  only  a  chap- 
ter of  reminiscences,  due  to  the  multitudinous 
singing  of  the  thrushes  on  this  side  and  that,  as 
we — I  and  my  great  dog — trod  the  high  cathedral 
aisles.  After  a  while  the  sound  of  running  water 
came  to  us  above  the  deeper  diapason  of  the  pines, 
and,  turning  aside,  we  clambered  down  to  a  brook 
which  we  had  already  learned  to  make  the  ter- 
minus of  our  walks.  Along  this  stream  we  had 
discovered  a  dozen  secret  nooks  where  man  and 
dog  might  lie  or  sit  at  ease,  and  to-day  I  stretched 
myself  on  a  cool,  hollow  rock,  with  my  eyes  look- 
ing up  the  long,  leafy  chasm  of  the  brook.  Just 
above  my  couch  the  current  was  dammed  b}'  a 
row  of  mossy  boulders,  over  which  the  waters 
poured  with  a  continual  murmur  and  plash.  My 
head  was  only  a  little  higher  than  the  pool  beyond 
the  boulders,  and,  lying  motionless,  I  watched  the 
flies  weaving  a  pattern  over  the  surface  of  the 
quiet  water,  and  now  and  then  was  rewarded  by 
seeing  a  greedy  trout  leap  into  the  sunlight  to 
capture  one  of  the  winged  weavers.  Surely,  if 
there  is  any  such  thing  as  real  intimacy  with 


THOREAU  9 

Nature,  it  is  in  just  such  secluded  spots  as  this; 
for  the  grander  scenes  require  of  us  a  moral  en- 
thusiasm which  can  come  to  the  soul  only  at  rare 
intervals  and  for  brief  moments.  From  these 
chosen  mountain  retreats,  one  might  send  to  a 
scientist,  busy  with  his  books  and  instruments 
and  curious  to  pr\'  into  the  secret  powers  of  Na- 
ture, some  such  an  appeal  as  this: — 


Brother,  awhile  your  impious  engines  leave  ; 

Nor  always  seek  with  flame-compeUing  wires 
Out  of  the  palsied  hand  of  Zeus  to  reave 

His  dear  celestial  fires. 

What  though  he  drowse  upon  a  tottering  bench, 
Forgetful  how  his  random  bolts  are  hurled  ! 

Are  you  to  blame  ?  or  is  it  yours  to  quench 
The  thunders  of  the  world? 

Come  learn  with  me  through  folly  to  be  wise  : 
Thiuk  you  by  cunning  laws  of  optic  lore 

To  lend  the  enamelled  fields  or  burning  skies 
One  splendour  lacked  before? 

A  wizard  footrule  to  the  waves  of  sound 
You  lay, — hath  measure  in  the  song  of  bird 

Or  ever  in  the  voice  of  waters  found 
One  melody  erst  unheard  ? 

Ah,  for  a  season  close  your  magic  books, 
Your  rods  and  crystals  in  the  closet  hide  ; 

I  know  in  covert  ways  a  hundred  nooks, 
High  on  the  mountain  side. 


lO  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

Where  through  the  golden  hours  that  follow  noon, 
Under  the  greenwood  shadows  you  and  I 

May  talk  of  happy  lives,  until  too  soon 
Night's  shadows  fold  the  sky. 

And  while  like  incense  blown  among  the  leaves 
Our  fragrant  smoke  ascends  from  carven  bowl, 

We'll  con  the  lesser  wisdom  that  deceives 
The  Questioner  in  the  soul. 

And  laugh  to  hoodwink  where  we  cannot  rout : — 
Did  Bruno  of  the  stubborn  heart  outbrave, 

Or  could  the  mind  of  Galileo  flout 
The  folly  of  the  Grave  ? 

So  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  lesser  wisdom  of 
quiet  content  before  the  face  of  Nature's  mysteries 
might  be  studied  in  the  untrained  garden  of  my 
hermitage.  But  I  have  been  dreaming  and  moral- 
ising on  the  little  life  about  me  and  the  greater 
life  of  the  world  too  long.  So  lying  near  the  level 
of  the  still  pool  I  began  to  read.  The  volume 
chosen  was  the  most  appropriate  to  the  time 
and  place  that  could  be  imagined, — Thoreau's 
Walden;  and  having  entered  upon  an  experiment 
not  altogether  unlike  his,  I  now  set  myself  to 
reading  the  record  of  his  two  years  of  solitude, 
I  learned  many  things  from  that  morning's  perti- 
sal.  Several  times  I  had  read  the  Odyssey  within 
sight  of  the  sea;  and  the  murmur  of  the  waves 
on  the  beach,  beating  through  the  rhythm  of  the 
poem,  had  taught  me  how  vital  a  thing  a  book 
might  be,  and  how  it  could  acquire  a  peculiar 


THOREAU  II 

validity  from  harmonious  surroundings;  but  now 
the  reading  of  Thoreau  in  that  charmed  and  lonely- 
spot  emphasised  this  commonplace  truth  in  a 
special  manner.  Waldcii  studied  in  the  closet, 
and  Walden  mused  over  under  the  trees,  by  run- 
ning water,  are  two  quite  different  books.  And 
then,  from  Thoreau,  the  greatest  by  far  of  our 
writers  on  Nature,  and  the  creator  of  a  new  senti- 
ment in  literature,  my  mind  turned  to  the  long  list 
of  Americans  who  have  left,  or  are  still  composing, 
a  worthy  record  of  their  love  and  appreciation  of 
the  natural  world.  Our  land  of  multiform  activi- 
ties has  produced  so  little  that  is  really  creative 
in  literature  or  art!  Hawthorne  and  Poe,  and 
possibly  one  or  two  others,  were  masters  in  their 
own  field;  yet  even  they  chose  not  quite  the  high- 
est realm  for  their  genius  to  work  in.  But  in  one 
."ubject  our  writers  have  led  the  way  and  are  still 
pre-eminent:  Thoreau  was  the  creator  of  a  new 
manner  of  writing  about  Nature.  In  its  deeper 
essence  his  work  is  inimitable,  as  it  is  the  voice 
of  a  imique  personality;  but  in  its  superficial 
a<5pects  it  has  been  taken  up  by  a  host  of  living 
writers,  who  have  caught  something  of  his 
method,  even  if  they  lack  his  genius  and  single- 
ness of  heart.  From  these  it  was  an  easy  transi- 
tion to  compare  Thoreau's  attitude  of  mind  with 
that  of  Wordsworth  and  the  other  great  poets  of 
his  century  who  went  to  Nature  for  their  inspira- 
tion, and  made  Nature-writing  the  characteristic 
note  of  modern  verse.     What  is  it  in  Thoreau 


12  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

that  is  not  to  be  found  in  Byron  and  Shelley  and 
Wordsworth,  not  to  mention  old  Izaak  Walton, 
Gilbert  White  of  Selborne,  and  a  host  of  others  ? 
It  was  a  rare  treat,  as  I  lay  in  that  leafy  covert, 
to  go  over  in  memory  the  famous  descriptive  pass- 
ages from  these  authors,  and  to  contrast  their 
spirit  with  that  of  the  book  in  my  hand. 

As  I  considered  these  matters,  it  seemed  to  me 
that  Thoreau's  work  was  distinguished  from  that 
of  his  American  predecessors  and  imitators  by  just 
these  qualities  of  awe  and  wonder  which  we,  in 
our  communings  with  Nature,  so  often  cast  away. 
Mere  description,  though  it  may  at  times  have  a 
scientific  value,  is  after  all  a  very  cheap  form  of 
literature;  and,  as  I  have  already  intimated,  too 
much  curiosity  of  detail  is  likely  to  exert  a  dead- 
ening influence  on  the  philosophic  and  poetic  con- 
templation of  Nature.  Such  an  influence  is,  as  I 
believe,  specially  noticeable  at  the  present  time, 
and  even  Thoreau  was  not  entirely  free  from  its 
baneful  efi'ect.  Much  of  his  writing,  perhaps  the 
greater  part,  is  the  mere  record  of  observation 
and  classification,  and  has  not  the  slightest  claim 
on  our  remembrance, — unless,  indeed,  it  possesses 
some  scientific  value,  which  I  doubt.  Certainly 
the  parts  of  his  work  having  permanent  interest 
are  just  those  chapters  where  he  is  less  the  minute 
observer,  and  more  the  contemplative  philosopher. 
Despite  the  width  and  exactness  of  his  informa- 
tion, he  was  far  from  having  the  truly  scientific 
spirit;    the  acquisition  of  knowledge,  with  him, 


THOREAU  13 

was  in  the  end  quite  subordinate  to  his  interest  in 
the  moral  significance  of  Nature,  and  the  words 
he  read  in  her  obscure  scroll  were  a  language  of 
strange  mysteries,  oftentimes  of  awe.  It  is  a  con- 
stant reproach  to  the  prying,  self-satisfied  habits 
of  small  minds  to  see  the  reverence  of  this  great- 
hearted observer  before  the  supreme  goddess  he 
so  loved  and  studied. 

Much  of  this  contemplative  spirit  of  Thoreau  is 
due  to  the  soul  of  the  man  himself,  to  that  per- 
sonal force  which  no  analysis  of  character  can  ex- 
plain. But,  besides  this,  it  has  always  seemed  to 
me  that,  more  than  in  any  other  descriptive  writer 
of  the  land,  his  mind  is  the  natural  outgrowth, 
and  his  essays  the  natural  expression,  of  a  feeling 
deep-rooted  in  the  historical  beginnings  of  New 
England;  and  this  foundation  in  the  past  gives  a 
strength  and  convincing  force  to  his  words  that 
lesser  writers  utterly  lack.  Consider  the  new  life 
of  the  Puritan  colonists  in  the  strange  surround- 
ings of  their  desert  home.  Consider  the  case  of 
the  adventurous  Pilgrims  sailing  from  the  com- 
fortable city  of  Leyden  to  the  unknown  wilderness 
over  the  sea.  As  Governor  Bradford  wrote,  "  the 
place  they  had  thoughts  on  was  some  of  those 
vast  &  unpeopled  countries  of  America,  which  are 
frutfuU  &  fitt  for  habitation,  being  devoyd  of  all 
civill  inhabitants,  wher  ther  are  only  salvage  and 
brutish  men,  which  range  up  and  downe,  little 
otherwise  than  ye  wild  beasts  of  the  same."  In 
these  vast  and  unpeopled  countries,  where  beast 


14  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

and  bird  were  strange  to  the  eye,  and  where 
"salvage"  men  abounded, —  men  who  did  not 
always  make  the  land  so  "  fitt "  for  new  inhabit- 
ants as  Bradford  might  have  desired, — it  was  in- 
evitable that  the  mind  should  be  turned  to  explore 
and  report  on  natural  phenomena  and  on  savage 
life.  It  is  a  fact  that  some  of  the  descriptions  of 
sea  and  land  made  by  wanderers  to  Virginia  and 
Massachusetts  have  a  directness  and  graphic 
power,  touched  occasionally  with  an  element  of 
wildness,  that  render  them  even  to-day  agreeable 
reading. 

This  was  before  the  time  of  Rousseau,  and 
before  Gray  had  discovered  the  beauty  of  wild 
mountain  scenery;  inevitably  the  early  American 
writers  were  chiefly  interested  in  Nature  as  the 
home  of  future  colonists,  and  their  books  are  for 
the  most  part  semi-scientific  accounts  of  what 
they  studied  from  a  utilitarian  point  of  view.  But 
the  dryness  of  detailed  description  in  the  New 
World  was  from  the  first  modified  and  lighted  up 
by  the  wondering  awe  of  men  set  down  in  the 
midst  of  the  strange  and  often  threatening  forces 
of  an  untried  wilderness;  and  this  sense  of  awful 
aloofness,  which  to  a  certain  extent  lay  dormant 
in  the  earlier  writers,  did  nevertheless  sink  deep 
into  the  heart  of  New  England,  and  when,  in  the 
lapse  of  time,  the  country  entered  into  its  intellec- 
tual renaissance,  and  the  genius  came  who  was 
destined  to  give  full  expression  to  the  thoughts 
of  his  people  before  the  face  of  Nature,  it  was  in- 


THOREAU  15 

evitable  that  his  works  should  be  dominated  by- 
just  this  sense  of  poetic  mj'stery. 

It  is  this  New  World  inheritance,  moreover, — 
joined,  of  course,  with  his  own  inexplicable  per- 
sonality, which  must  not  be  left  out  of  account, — 
that  makes  Thoreau's  attitude  toward  Nature 
something  quite  distinct  from  that  of  the  great 
poets  who  just  preceded  him.  There  was  in  him 
none  of  the  fiery  spirit  of  the  revolution  which 
caused  Byron  to  mingle  hatred  of  men  with  en- 
thusiasm for  the  Alpine  solitudes.  There  was 
none  of  the  passion  for  beauty  and  the  voluptuous 
self-abandonment  of  Keats;  these  were  not  in  the 
atmosphere  he  breathed  at  Concord.  He  was  not 
touched  with  Shelley's  unearthly  mysticism,  nor 
had  he  ever  fed 

on  the  aerial  kisses 
Of  shapes  that  hauut  thought's  wildernesses  ; 

his  moral  sinews  were  too  stark  and  strong  for 
that  form  of  mental  dissipation.  Least  of  all  did 
he,  after  the  manner  of  Wordsworth,  hear  in  the 
voice  of  Nature  any  compassionate  plea  for  the 
weakness  and  sorrow  of  the  downtrodden.  Phi- 
lanthropy and  humanitarian  sympathies  were  to 
him  a  desolation  and  a  woe.  "  Philanthropy  is 
almost  the  only  virtue  which  is  sufficiently  appre- 
ciated by  mankind.  Nay,  it  is  greatly  overrated; 
and  it  is  our  selfi.shness  which  overrates  it,"  he 
writes.  And  again:  "  The  philanthropi.st  too 
often  surrounds  mankind  with  the  remembrance 


l6  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

of  his  own  cast-oflf  griefs  as  an  atmosphere,  and 
calls  it  sympathy."  Similarly  his  reliance  on 
the  human  will  was  too  sturdy  to  be  much  per- 
turbed by  the  inequalities  and  sufferings  of  man- 
kind, and  his  faith  in  the  individual  was  too 
unshaken  to  be  led  into  humanitarian  interest  in 
the  masses.  "  Alas!  this  is  the  crying  sin  of  the 
age,"  he  declares,  "  this  want  of  faith  in  the 
prevalence  of  a  man." 

But  the  deepest  and  most  essential  difference  is 
the  lack  of  pantheistic  reverie  in  Thoreau.  It  is 
this  brooding  over  the  universal  spirit  embodied 
in  the  material  world  which  almost  always  marks 
the  return  of  sympathy  with  Nature,  and  which 
is  particularly  noticeable  in  the  writers  of  the  past 
century.  So  Lord  Byron,  wracked  and  broken 
by  his  social  catastrophes,  turns  for  relief  to  the 
fair  scenes  of  Lake  Leman,  and  finds  in  the  high 
mountains  and  placid  waters  a  consoling  spirit 
akin  to  his  own. 

Are  not  tlie  mountains,  waves,  and  skies,  a  part 
Of  me  and  of  my  soul,  as  I  of  them  ? 

he  asks;  and  in  the  bitterness  of  his  human  dis- 
appointment he  would  ' '  be  alone,  and  love  Earth 
only  for  its  earthly  sake."  Shelley,  too,  "  mixed 
awful  talk"  with  the  "  great  parent,"  and  heard 
in  her  voice  an  answer  to  all  his  vague  dreams  of 
the  soul  of  universal  love.  No  one,  so  far  as  I 
know,  has  yet  studied  the  relation  between  Words- 
worth's pantheism   and  his  humanitarian  sym- 


THOREAU  17 

pathies,  but  we  need  only  glance  at  his  lines  on 
Tintern  Abbey  to  see  how  closely  the  two  feelings 
were  interknit  in  his  mind.  It  was  because  he 
felt  this 

sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man  ; 

it  was  because  the  distinctions  of  the  human  will 
and  the  consequent  perception  of  individual  re- 
sponsibilit}^  were  largely  absorbed  in  this  dream  of 
the  universal  spirit,  that  he  heard  in  Nature  "  the 
still,  sad  music  of  humanity,"  and  reproduced  it 
so  sympathetically  in  his  own  song.  Of  all  this 
pantheism,  whether  attended  with  revolt  from  re- 
sponsibilit}^  or  languid  reverie  or  humanitarian 
dreams,  there  is  hardly  a  trace  in  Thoreau.  The 
memory  of  man's  struggle  with  the  primeval 
woods  and  fields  was  not  so  lost  in  antiquity  that 
the  world  had  grown  into  an  indistinguishable  part 
of  human  life.  If  Nature  smiled  upon  Thoreau  at 
times,  she  was  still  an  alien  creature  who  suc- 
cumbed only  to  his  force  and  tenderness,  as  she  had 
before  given  her  bounty,  though  reluctantly,  to 
the  Pilgrim  Fathers.  A  certain  companionship 
he  had  with  the  plants  and  wild  beasts  of  the 
field,  a  certain  intimacy  with  the  dumb  earth;  but 
he  did  not  seek  to  merge  his  personality  in  their 
impersonal  life,  or  look  to  them  for  a  response  to 


(S  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

his  own  inner  moods;  he  associated  with  them  as 
the  soul  associates  with  the  body. 

More  characteristic  is  his  sense  of  awe,  even  of 
dread,  toward  the  great  unsubdued  forces  of  the 
world.  The  loneliness  of  the  mountains  such  as 
they  appeared  to  the  early  adventurers  in  a 
strange,  unexplored  country;  the  repellent  lone- 
liness of  the  barren  heights  frowning  down  in- 
hospitably upon  the  pioneer  who  scratched  the 
soil  at  their  base;  the  loneliness  and  terror  of  the 
dark,  untrodden  forests,  where  the  wanderer 
might  stray  away  and  be  lost  forever,  where 
savage  men  were  more  feared  than  the  wild  ani- 
mals, and  where  superstition  saw  the  haunt  of 
the  Black  Man  and  of  all  uncleanness, — all  this 
tradition  of  sombre  solitude  made  Nature  to 
Thoreau  something  very  different  from  the  hills 
and  valleys  of  Old  England.  ' '  We  have  not  seen 
pure  Nature,"  he  says,  "  unless  we  have  seen  her 
thus  vast  and  drear  and  inhuman.  .  .  .  Man 
was  not  to  be  associated  with  it.  It  was  matter, 
vast,  terrific, — not  his  Mother  Karth  that  we  have 
heard  of,  not  for  him  to  tread  on,  or  be  buried  in, 
—no,  it  were  being  too  familiar  even  to  let  his 
bones  lie  there, — the  home,  this,  of  Necessity  and 
Fate."  After  reading  Byron's  invocation  to  the 
Alps  as  the  palaces  of  Nature;  or  the  ethereal 
mountain  scenes  in  Shelley's  Alastor,  where  all 
the  sternness  of  the  everlasting  hills  is  dissolved 
into  rainbow  hues  of  shifting  light  as  dainty  as 
the  poet's  own  soul;   or  Wordsworth's  familiar 


THOREAU  19 

musings  in  the  vale  of  Grasmere, — if,  after  these, 
we  turn  to  Thoreau's  account  of  the  ascent  of 
Mount  Katahdin,  we  seem  at  once  to  be  in  the 
home  of  another  tradition.  I  am  tempted  to 
quote  a  few  sentences  of  that  account  to  empha- 
sise the  point.  On  the  mountain  heights,  he  says 
of  the  beholder: 

He  is  more  lone  than  you  can  imagine.  There  is  less 
of  substantial  thought  and  fair  understanding  in  him 
than  in  the  plains  where  men  inhabit.  His  reason  is  dis- 
persed and  shadowy,  more  thin  and  subtile,  like  the  air. 
Vast,  Titanic,  inhuman  Nature  has  got  him  at  disadvan- 
tage, caught  him  alone,  and  pilfers  him  of  some  of  his 
divine  facultj'.  She  does  not  smile  on  him  as  in  the 
plains.  She  seems  to  say  sternly,  Why  came  ye  here 
before  your  time?  This  ground  is  not  prepared  for  you. 
Is  it  not  enough  that  I  smile  in  the  valleys?  I  have 
never  made  this  soil  for  thy  feet,  this  air  for  thy  breath- 
ing, these  rocks  for  thy  neighbours.  I  cannot  pity  nor 
fondle  thee  here,  but  forever  relentlesslj*  drive  thee  hence 
to  where  I  am  kind. 

I  do  not  mean  to  present  the  work  of  Thoreau 
as  equal  in  value  to  the  achievement  of  the  great 
poets  with  whom  I  have  compared  him,  btit  wish 
merely  in  this  way  to  bring  out  more  definitely 
his  characteristic  traits.  Yet  if  his  creative  genius 
is  less  than  theirs,  I  cannot  btit  think  his  attitude 
toward  Nature  is  in  many  respects  truer  and  more 
wholesome.  Pantheism,  whether  on  the  banks 
of  the  Ganges  or  of  the  Thames,  seems  to  bring 
with  it  a  spreading  taint  of  effeminacy;  and  from 
this  the  mental  attitude  of  our  Concord  naturalist 


20  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

was  eminently  free.  There  is  something  tonic 
and  bracing  in  his  intercourse  with  the  rude  forces 
of  the  forest;  he  went  to  Walden  Pond  because  he 
had  "private  business  to  transact,"  not  for  relax- 
ation and  mystical  reverie.  "To  be  a  philoso- 
pher," he  said,  "is  not  merely  to  have  subtle 
thoughts,  nor  even  to  found  a  school,  but  so  to 
love  wisdom  as  to  live  according  to  its  dictates,  a 
life  of  simplicity,  independence,  magnanimity,  and 
trust; ' '  and  by  recurring  to  the  solitudes  of  Nature 
he  thought  he  could  best  develop  in  himself  just 
these  manly  virtues,  i  Nature  was  to  him  a  dis- 
cipline of  the  will  as  much  as  a  stimulant  to  the 
imagination.^  He  would,  if  it  were  possible, 
"  combine  the  hardiness  of  the  savages  with  the 
intellectualness  of  the  civilised  man;  "  and  in  this 
method  of  working  out  the  philosophical  life  we 
see  again  the  influence  of  long  and  deep-rooted 
tradition.  To  the  first  settlers,  the  red  man  was 
as  much  an  object  of  curiosity  and  demanded  as 
much  study  as  the  earth  they  came  to  cultivate; 
their  books  are  full  of  graphic  pictures  of  savage 
life,  and  it  should  seem  as  if  now  in  Thoreau  this 
inherited  interest  had  received  at  last  its  ripest  ex- 
pression. When  he  travelled  in  the  wilderness 
of  Maine,  he  was  as  much  absorbed  in  learning 
the  habits  of  his  Indian  guides  as  in  exploring  the 
woods.  He  had  some  innate  sympathy  or  percep- 
tion which  taught  him  to  find  relics  of  old  Indian 
life  where  others  would  pass  them  by,  and  there 
is  a  well-known  story  of  his  answer  to  one  who 


THOREAU  21 

asked  him  where  such  relics  could  be  discovered: 
he  merely  stooped  down  and  picked  an  arrowhead 
from  the  ground. 

And  withal  his  stoic  virtues  never  dulled  his 
sense  of  awe,  and  his  long  years  of  observation 
never  lessened  his  feeling  of  strangeness  in  the 
presence  of  solitary  Nature.  If  at  times  his  writ- 
ing descends  into  the  cataloguing  style  of  the  ordi- 
nary naturalist,  yet  the  old  tradition  of  wonder 
was  too  strong  in  him  to  be  more  than  temporarily 
obscured.  Unfortunately,  his  occasional  faults 
have  become  in  some  of  his  recent  imitators  the 
staple  of  their  talent;  but  Thoreau  was  pre-emi- 
nently the  poet  and  philosopher  of  his  school,  and 
I  cannot  do  better  than  close  these  desultory  notes 
with  the  quotation  of  a  passage  which  seems  to 
me  to  convey  most  vividly  his  sensitiveness  to  the 
solemn  mystery  of  the  deep  forest : 

We  heard  [he  writes  in  his  Chcsuncook\  come  faintly 
echoing,  or  creeping  from  afar,  through  the  moss-clad 
aisles,  a  dull,  dry,  rushing  sound,  with  a  solid  core  to  it, 
yet  as  if  half  smothered  under  the  grasp  of  the  luxuriant 
and  fungus-like  forest,  like  the  shutting  of  a  door  in  some 
distant  entry  of  the  damp  and  shaggy  wilderness.  If  we 
had  not  been  there,  no  mortal  had  heard  it.  When  we 
asked  Joe  [the  Indian  guide]  in  a  whisper  what  it  was, 
he  answered, — "Tree  fall." 


THE  SOLITUDE  OF  NATHANIEL 
HAWTHORNE 

In  a  notable  passage,  Hawthorne  has  said  of 
his  own  Twice-Told  Tales  that  "  they  have  the 
pale  tint  of  flowers  that  blossomed  in  too  retired 
a  shade.  .  .  .  Instead  of  passion  there  is 
sentiment.  .  .  .  Whether  from  lack  of  power 
or  an  unconquerable  reserve,  the  author's  touches 
have  often  an  effect  of  tameness;  the  merriest  man 
can  hardly  contrive  to  laugh  at  his  broadest 
humour;  the  tenderest  woman,  one  would  sup- 
pose, will  hardly  shed  warm  tears  at  his  deepest 
pathos."  And  a  little  further  on  he  adds,  "  The 
sketches  are  not,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say, 
profound."  Rarely  has  a  writer  shown  greater 
skill  in  self-criticism  than  Hawthorne,  except 
where  modesty  caused  him  to  lower  the  truth,  and 
in  ascribing  this  lack  of  passion  to  his  works  he 
has  struck  what  will  seem  to  many  the  keynote 
of  their  character.  When  he  says,  however,  that 
they  are  wanting  in  depth,  he  certainly  errs 
through  modesty.  Many  authors,  great  and 
small,  display  a  lack  of  passion,  but  perhaps  no 
other  in  all  the  hierarchy  of  poets  who  deal  with 
moral  problems  has  treated  these  problems,  on  one 


HAWTHORNE  23 

side  at  least,  so  profoundly  as  our  New  England 
romancer;  and  it  is  just  this  peculiarity  of  Haw- 
thorne, so  apparently  paradoxical,  which  gives 
him  his  unique  place  among  writers. 

Consider  for  a  moment  The  Scarlet  Letter:  the 
pathos  of  the  subject,  and  the  tragic  scenes  por- 
trayed. All  the  world  agrees  that  here  is  a 
masterpiece  of  mortal  error  and  remorse;  we  are 
lost  in  admiration  of  the  author's  insight  into  the 
suflfering  human  heart;  yet  has  any  one  ever  shed 
a  tear  over  that  inimitable  romance  ?  I  think  not. 
The  book  does  not  move  us  to  tears;  it  awakens 
no  sense  of  shuddering  awe  such  as  follows  the 
perusal  of  the  great  tragedies  of  literature;  it  is 
not  emotional,  in  the  ordinary  acceptance  of  the 
word,  yet  shallow  or  cold  it  certainly  is  not. 

In  the  English  Note- Books  Hawthorne  makes 
this  interesting  comparison  of  himself  with 
Thackeray  : 

Mr.  S is  a  friend  of  Thackeray  [he  writes],  and, 

speaking  of  the  last  number  of  The  Newcomes,— so 
touching  that  nobody  can  read  it  aloud  without  breaking 
down,— he  mentioned  that  Thackeray  himself  had  read 
it  to  James  Russell  Lowell  and  William  Story  in  a  cider 
cellar !  .  .  .  I  cannot  but  wonder  at  his  coolness  in 
respect  to  his  own  pathos,  and  compare  it  with  my 
emotions  when  I  read  the  last  scene  of  The  Scarlet 
Letter  to  my  wife,  just  after  writing  it, — tried  to  read  it, 
rather,  for  my  voice  swelled  and  heaved,  as  if  I  were 
tossed  up  and  down  on  an  ocean  as  it  subsides  after  a  storm. 

Why,  then,  we  ask,  should  we  have  tears  ready 
for    The  Newcomes,   and  none   for    The  Scarlet 


24  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

Letter,  although  the  pathos  of  the  latter  tale  can 
so  stir  the  depths  of  our  nature  as  it  did  the  au- 
thor's? What  curious  trait  in  his  writing,  what 
strange  attitude  of  the  man  toward  the  moral 
struggles  and  agony  of  human  nature,  is  this  that 
sets  him  apart  from  other  novelists  ?  I  purpose 
to  show  how  this  is  due  to  one  dominant  motive 
running  through  all  his  tales, — a  thought  to  a 
certain  extent  peculiar  to  himself,  and  so  per- 
sistent in  its  repetition  that,  to  one  who  reads 
Hawthorne  carefully,  his  works  seem  to  fall  to- 
gether like  the  movements  of  a  great  symphony- 
built  upon  one  imposing  theme. 

I  remember,  some  time  ago,  when  walking 
among  the  Alps,  that  I  happened  on  a  Sunday 
morning  to  stray  into  the  little  English  church  at 
Interlaken.  The  room  was  pretty  well  filled  with 
a  chance  audience,  most  of  whom  no  doubt  were, 
like  myself,  refugees  from  civilisation  for  the  sake 
of  pleasure  or  rest  or  health.  The  minister  was  a 
young  sandy-haired  Scotsman,  with  nothing  nota- 
ble in  his  aspect  save  a  certain  unusual  look  of 
earnestness  about  the  eyes;  and  I  wonder  how 
many  of  my  fellow  listeners  still  remember  that 
quiet  Sabbath  morn,  and  the  sunlight  streaming 
over  all,  as  white  and  pure  as  if  poured  down  from 
the  snowy  peak  of  the  Jungfrau;  and  how  many 
of  them  still  at  times  see  that  plain  little  church, 
and  the  simple  man  standing  at  the  pulpit,  and 
hear  the  tones  of  his  vibrating  voice.  Opening 
the  Bible  he  paused  a  moment,  and  then  read,  in 


HAWTHORNE  2$ 

accents  that  faltered  a  little  as  if  with  emotion, 
the  words,  "  Eloi,  Eloi,  lama  sabachthani  ?  "  and 
then  paused  again  without  adding  the  translation. 
I  do  not  know  what  induced  him  to  choose  such 
a  text,  and  to  preach  such  a  sermon  before  an 
audience  of  summer  idlers;  it  even  seemed  to  me 
that  a  look  of  surprise  and  perturbation  stole  over 
their  faces  as,  in  tones  tremulous  from  the  start 
with  restrained  passion,  he  poured  forth  his  singu- 
lar discourse.  I  cannot  repeat  his  words.  He 
told  of  the  inevitable  loneliness  that  follows  man 
from  the  cradle  to  the  grave;  he  spoke  of  the  lone- 
liness that  lends  the  depth  of  yearning  to  a 
mother's  eyes  as  she  bends  over  her  newborn 
child,  for  the  soul  of  the  infant  has  been  rent 
from  her  own,  and  she  can  never  again  be  united 
to  what  she  cherished.  It  is  this  sense  of  indi- 
vidual loneliness  and  isolation,  he  said,  that  gives 
pathos  to  lovers'  eyes  when  love  has  brought 
them  closest  together;  it  is  this  that  lends  aus- 
terity to  the  patriot's  look  when  saluted  by  the 
acclaiming  multitude.  And  you,  he  cried,  who 
for  a  little  while  have  come  forth  from  the  world 
into  these  solitudes  of  God,  what  hope  ye  to  find  ? 
Some  respite,  no  doubt,  from  the  anxiety  that  op- 
pressed you  in  the  busy  towm,  in  the  midst  of  your 
loved  ones  about  the  hearth,  in  the  crowded 
market  place;  for  you  believe  that  these  solitudes 
of  nature  will  speak  to  your  hearts  and  comfort 
you,  and  that  in  the  peace  of  nature  you  will  find 
the  true  communion  of  soul  that  the  busy  world 


26  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

could  not  give  you.  Yet  are  you  deceived;  for 
the  sympathy  and  power  of  communion  between 
you  and  this  fair  creation  have  been  ruined  and 
utterly  cast  away  by  sin;  and  this  was  typified  in 
the  beginning  by  the  banishing  of  Adam  from  the 
terrestrial  paradise.  No,  the  murmur  of  these 
pleasant  brooks  and  the  whispering  of  these  happy 
leaves  shall  not  speak  to  the  deafened  ear  of  your 
soul;  nor  shall  the  verdure  of  these  sunny  fields 
and  the  glory  of  these  snowy  peaks  appeal  to  the 
darkened  eye  of  your  soul:  and  this  you  shall 
learn  to  your  utter  sorrow.  Go  back  to  your 
homes,  to  your  toil,  to  the  populous  deserts  where 
your  duty  lies.  Go  back  and  bear  bravely  the 
solitude  that  God  hath  given  you  to  bear;  for  this, 
I  declare  unto  you,  is  the  burden  and  the  penalty 
laid  upon  us  by  the  eternal  decrees  for  the  sin  we 
have  done,  and  for  the  sin  of  our  fathers  before 
us.  Think  not,  while  evil  abides  in  you,  ye  shall 
be  aught  but  alone;  for  evil  is  the  seeking  of  self 
and  the  turning  away  from  the  commonalty  of  the 
world.  Your  life  shall  indeed  be  solitary  until 
death,  the  great  solitude,  absorbs  it  at  last.  Go 
back  and  learn  righteousness  and  meekness;  and 
it  may  be,  when  the  end  cometh,  you  shall  attain 
unto  communion  with  him  who  alone  can  speak 
to  the  recluse  that  dwells  within  your  breast. 
And  he  shall  comfort  you  for  the  evil  of  this  soli- 
tude you  bear;  for  he  himself  hath  borne  it,  and 
his  last  cry  was  the  cry  of  desolation,  of  one  for- 
saken and  made  lonely  by  his  God. 


HAWTHORNE  27 

I  hope  I  may  be  pardoned  for  introducing 
memories  of  so  personal  a  nature  into  an  article 
of  literary  criticism,  but  there  seemed  no  better 
way  of  indicating  the  predominant  trait  of  Haw- 
thorne's work.  Other  poets  of  the  past  have  ex- 
celled him  in  giving  expression  to  certain  problems 
of  our  inner  life,  and  in  stirring  the  depths  of  our 
emotional  nature;  but  not  in  the  tragedies  of 
Greece,  or  the  epics  of  Italy,  or  the  drama  of 
Shakespeare  will  3-ou  find  any  presentation  of  this 
one  truth  of  the  penalty  of  solitude  laid  upon  the 
human  soul  so  fully  and  profoundly  worked  out 
as  in  the  romances  of  Hawthorne.  It  would  be 
tedious  to  take  up  each  of  his  novels  and  tales  and 
show  how  this  theme  runs  like  a  sombre  thread 
through  them  all,  j-et  it  may  be  worth  while  to 
touch  on  a  few  prominent  examples. 

Shortly  after  leaving  college,  Hawthorne  pub 
lished  a  novel  which  his  maturer  taste,  with  pro 
priety,  condemned.  Despite  the  felicity  of  styk 
which  seems  to  have  come  to  Hawthorne  by 
natural  right,  Fanshawe  is  but  a  crude  and  con- 
ventional story.  Yet  the  book  is  interesting  if 
only  to  show  how  at  the  verj'  outset  the  author 
struck  the  keynote  of  his  life's  work.  The  hero 
of  the  tale  is  the  conventional  student  that  figures 
in  romance,  wasted  by  study,  and  isolated  from 
mankind  by  his  intellectual  ideals.  "  He  had 
seemed,  to  others  and  to  himself,  a  solitary  being, 
upon  whom  the  hopes  and  fears  of  ordinary  men 
were  inefifectual."     The  whole  conception  of  the 


28  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

Story  is  a  commonplace,  yet  a  commonplace  re- 
lieved by  a  peculiar  quality  in  the  language  which 
even  in  this  early  attempt  predicts  the  stronger 
treatment  of  his  chosen  theme  when  the  artist 
shall  have  mastered  his  craft.  There  is,  too, 
something  memorable  in  the  parting  scene  be- 
tween the  hero  and  heroine,  where  Fanshawe, 
having  earned  Ellen's  love,  deliberately  surren- 
ders her  to  one  more  closely  associated  with  the 
world,  and  himself  goes  back  to  his  studies  and 
his  death. 

From  this  youthful  essay  let  us  turn  at  once  to 
his  latest  work — the  novel  begun  when  the  shadow 
of  coming  dissolution  had  already  fallen  upon  him, 
though  still  not  old  in  years;  to  that  "  tale  of  the 
deathless  man"  interrupted  by  the  intrusion  of 
Death,  as  if  in  mockery  of  the  artist's  theme — 

Ah,  who  shall  lift  that  wand  of  magic  power, 

And  the  lost  clue  regain  ! 
The  unfinished  window  in  Aladdin's  tower 

Unfinished  must  remain  ! 

In  the  fragment  of  The  Dolliver  Romance  we  have, 
wrought  out  with  all  the  charm  of  Hawthorne's 
maturest  style,  a  picture  of  isolation  caused,  not 
by  the  exclusive  ambitions  of  youth,  but  by  old 
age  and  the  frailty  of  human  nature.  No  extract 
or  comment  can  convey  the  effect  of  these  chapters 
of  minute  analysis,  with  their  portrait  of  the  old 
apothecary  dwelling  in  the  time-eaten  mansion, 
whose  windows  look  down  on  the  graves  of  child- 


HAWTHORNE  29 

ren  and  grandchildren  he  had  outlived  and  laid 
to  rest.  With  his  usual  sense  of  artistic  contrast, 
Hawthorne  sets  a  picture  of  golden-haired  youth 
by  the  side  of  withered  eld: 

The  Doctor's  only  child,  poor  Bessie's  offspring,  had 
died  the  better  part  of  a  hundred  years  before,  and  his 
grandchildren,  a  numerous  and  dimly  remembered 
brood,  had  vanished  along  his  weary  track,  in  their 
youth,  maturity,  or  incipient  age,  till,  hardly  knowing 
how  it  had  all  happened,  he  found  himself  tottering  on- 
ward with  an  infant's  small  fingers  in  his  nerveless 
grasp. 

Again,  in  describing  the  loneliness  that  separates 
old  age  from  the  busy  current  of  life,  Hawthorne 
has  recourse  to  a  picture  which  he  employed  a 
number  of  times,  and  which  seems  to  have  been 
drawn  from  his  own  experience  and  to  have 
haunted  his  dreams.  It  is  the  picture  of  a  be- 
wildered man  walking  the  populous  .streets,  and 
feeling  utterly  lost  and  estranged  in  the  crowd. 
So  the  old  doctor  "  felt  a  dreary  impulse  to  elude 
the  people's  observation,  as  if  with  a  sen.se  that  he 
had  gone  irrevocably  out  of  fashion;  ...  or 
else  it  was  that  nightmare  feeling  which  we  some- 
times have  in  dreams,  when  we  .seem  to  find  our- 
selves wandering  through  a  crowded  avenue,  with 
the  noonday  sun  upon  us,  in  some  wild  extrava- 
gance of  dress  or  nudity."  We  are  reminded  by 
the  words  of  Hawthorne's  own  habit,  during  his 
early  Salem  years,  of  choosing  to  walk  abroad  at 
night  when  no  one  could  observe  him,  and  of  his 


30  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

trick  in  later  life  of  hiding  in  the  Concord  woods 
rather  than  face  a  passer-by  on  the  road. 

Between  Fanshawe,  with  its  story  of  the  seclu- 
sion caused  by  youthful  ambition,  and  The  Dolli- 
ver  Ro77iance,  with  its  picture  of  isolated  old  age, 
there  may  be  found  in  the  author's  successive 
works  every  form  of  solitude  incident  to  human 
existence.  I  believe  no  single  tale,  however  short 
or  insignificant,  can  be  named  in  which,  under 
one  guise  or  another,  this  recurrent  idea  does  not 
appear.  It  is  as  if  the  poet's  heart  were  burdened 
with  an  emotion  that  unconsciously  dominated 
every  faculty  of  his  mind;  he  walked  through  life 
like  a  man  possessed.  Often  while  reading  his 
novels  I  have  of  a  sudden  found  myself  back  in 
the  little  chapel  at  Interlaken,  listening  to  that 
strange  discourse  on  the  penalty  of  sin;  and  the 
cry  of  the  text  once  more  goes  surging  through 
my  ears,  "  Why  hast  thou  forsaken  me  ?  "  Truly 
a  curse  is  upon  us;  our  life  is  rounded  with  im- 
passable emptiness;  the  stress  of  youth,  the 
feebleness  of  age,  all  the  passions  and  desires  of 
manhood,  lead  but  to  this  inevitable  solitude  and 
isolation  of  spirit. 

Perhaps  the  first  work  to  awaken  any  consider- 
able interest  in  Hawthorne  was  the  story — not  one 
of  his  best — of  The  Gentle  Boy.  The  pathos  of 
the  poor  child  severed  by  religious  fanaticism 
from  the  fellowship  of  the  world  stirred  a  sympa- 
thetic chord  in  the  New  England  heart:  and  it 
may  even  be  that  tears  were  shed  over  the  home- 


HAWTHORNE  3 1 

less  lad  clinging  to  his  father's  grave;    for  his 
"  father  was  of  the  people  whom  all  men  hate." 

But  far  more  characteristic  in  its  weird  intensity 
and  philosophic  symbolism  is  the  story  of  The 
Minister's  Black  Veil.  No  one  who  has  read 
them  has  ever  forgotten  the  dying  man's  fateful 
words: 

Why  do  you  tremble  at  me  aloue?  Tremble  also  at 
each  other !  Have  men  avoided  me,  and  women  shown 
no  pity,  and  children  screamed  and  fled,  only  for  my 
black  veil?  What,  but  the  mystery  which  it  obscurely 
typifies,  has  made  this  piece  of  crape  so  awful?  When 
the  friend  shows  his  inmost  heart  to  his  friend,  the  lover 
to  his  best  beloved  ;  when  man  does  not  vainly  shrink 
from  the  eye  of  his  Creator,  loathsomely  treasuring  up 
the  secret  of  his  sin  ;  then  deem  me  a  monster,  for  the 
symbol  beneath  which  I  have  lived,  and  die !  I  look 
around  me,  and,  lo !  on  every  visage  a  Black  Veil ! 

In  another  of  the  Twice-  Told  Tales  the  same 
thought  is  presented  in  a  form  as  ghastly  as  any- 
thing to  be  found  in  the  pages  of  Poe  or  Hoflfman. 
The  Lady  Eleanore  has  come  to  these  shores  in 
the  early  colonial  days,  bringing  with  her  a  heart 
filled  with  aristocratic  pride.  She  has,  moreover, 
all  the  arrogance  of  queenly  beauty,  and  her  first 
entrance  into  the  governor's  mansion  is  over  the 
prostrate  body  of  a  despised  lover.  Her  insolence 
is  symbolised  throughout  by  a  mantle  which  she 
wears,  of  strange  and  fascinating  splendour,  em- 
broidered for  her  by  the  fingers  of  a  dying  woman, 
— a  woman  dying,  it  proves,  of  the  smallpox,  so 


32  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

that  the  infested  robe  becomes  the  cause  of  a 
pestilence  that  sweeps  the  province.  It  happens 
now  and  then  that  Hawthorne  falls  into  a  revolt- 
ing realism,  and  the  last  scene,  where  Lady  Elea- 
nore,  perishing  of  the  disease  that  has  flowed 
from  her  own  arrogance,  is  confronted  by  her  old 
lover,  produces  a  feeling  in  the  reader  almost  of 
loathing.  Yet  the  lady's  last  words  are  significant 
enough  to  be  quoted:  "  The  curse  of  Heaven  hath 
stricken  me,  because  I  would  not  call  man  my 
brother,  nor  woman  sister.  I  wrapped  myself  in 
PRIDE  as  in  a  manTIvE,  and  scorned  the  sympa- 
thies of  nature;  and  therefore  has  nature  made 
this  wretched  body  the  medium  of  a  dreadful 
sympathy."  Alas  for  the  poor,  broken  creature 
of  pride!  She  but  suffered  for  electing  freely  a 
loneliness  which,  in  one  form  or  another,  whether 
voluntary  or  involuntary,  haunts  all  the  chief 
persons  of  her  creator's  world.  It  is,  indeed, 
characteristic  of  this  solitude  of  spirit  that  it  pre- 
sents itself  now  as  the  original  sin  awakening 
Heaven's  wrath,  and  again  as  itself  the  penaltj' 
imposed  upon  the  guilty  soul:  which  is  but  Haw- 
thorne's way  of  portraying  evil  and  its  retribution 
as  simultaneous, — nay,  as  one  and  the  same  thing. 
But  we  linger  too  long  on  these  minor  works 
of  our  author.  Much  has  been  written  about  The 
Scarlet  Letter,  and  it  has  been  often  studied  as  an 
essay  in  the  effects  of  crime  on  the  human  heart. 
In  truth,  one  cannot  easily  find,  outside  of 
-^schylus,  words  of  brooding  so  profound  and 


HAWTHORNE  33 

single-hearted  on  this  solemn  subject;  their  mean- 
ing, too,  should  seem  to  be  written  large,  yet  I  am 
not  aware  that  the  real  originality  and  issue  of  the 
book  have  hitherto  been  clearly  discussed.  Other 
poets  have  laid  bare  the  workings  of  a  diseased 
conscience,  the  perturbations  of  a  soul  that  has 
gone  astray;  others  have  shown  the  confusion 
and  horror  wrought  by  crime  in  the  family  or  the 
state,  and  something  of  these,  too,  may  be  found 
in  the  eflfects  of  Dimmesdale's  sin  in  the  provincial 
community;  but  the  true  moral  of  the  tale  lies  in 
another  direction.  It  is  a  story  of  intertangled 
love  and  hatred  working  out  in  four  human  be- 
ings the  same  primal  curse, — love  and  hatred  so 
woven  together  that  in  the  end  the  author  asks 
whether  the  two  passions  be  not,  after  all,  the 
same,  since  each  renders  one  individual  dependent 
upon  another  for  his  spiritual  food,  and  each  is  in 
a  way  an  attempt  to  break  through  the  boundary 
that  separates  soul  from  soul.  From  the  opening 
scene  at  the  prison  door,  which,  "  like  all  that 
pertains  to  crime,  seemed  never  to  have  known  a 
youthful  era,"  to  the  final  scene  on  the  scaffold, 
where  the  tragic  imagination  of  the  author  speaks 
with  a  power  barely  surpassed  in  the  books  of  the 
world,  the  whole  plot  of  the  romance  moves  about 
this  one  conception  of  our  human  isolation  as  the 
penalty  of  transgression. 

Upon  Arthur  Dimmesdale  the  punishment  falls 
most  painfully.  From  the  cold  and  lonely  heights 
of  his  spiritual  life  he  has  stepped  down,  in  a  vain 


34  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

endeavour  against  God's  law,  to  seek  the  warmth 
of  companionship  in  illicit  love.  He  sins,  and  the 
very  purity  and  fineness  of  his  nature  make  the 
act  of  confession  before  the  world  almost  an  im- 
possibility. The  result  is  a  strange  contradiction 
of  effects  that  only  Hawthorne  could  have  recon- 
ciled. By  his  sin  Dimmesdale  is  more  than  ever 
cut  off  from  communion  with  the  world,  and  is 
driven  to  an  asceticism  and  aloofness  so  com- 
plete that  it  becomes  difficult  for  him  to  look  any 
man  in  the  eye;  on  the  other  hand,  the  brooding 
secret  of  his  passion  gives  him  new  and  powerful 
sympathies  with  life's  burden  of  sorrow,  and  fills 
his  sermons  with  a  wonderful  eloquence  to  stir  the 
hearts  of  men.  This,  too,  is  the  paradox  running 
like  a  double  thread  through  all  the  author's 
works.  Out  of  our  isolation  grow  the  passions 
which  but  illuminate  and  render  more  visible  the 
void  from  which  they  sprang ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  he  is  impressed  by  that  truth  which  led  him 
to  say:  "  We  are  but  shadows,  and  all  that  seems 
most  real  about  us  is  but  the  thinnest  substance 
of  a  dream, —  till  the  heart  be  touched.  That 
touch  creates  us, — then  we  begin  to  be, — thereby 
we  are  beings  of  reality  and  inheritors  of  eternity . ' ' 
Opposed  to  the  erring  minister  stands  Roger 
Chillingworth,  upon  whom  the  curse  acts  more 
hideously,  if  not  more  painfully.  The  incom- 
municative student,  misshapen  from  his  birth 
hour,  who  has  buried  his  life  in  books  and  starved 
his  emotions  to  feed  his  brain,  would  draw  the  fair 


HAWTHORNE  35 

maiden  Hester  into  his  heart,  to  warm  that  inner- 
most chamber  left  lonely  and  chill  and  without  a 
household  fire.  Out  of  this  false  and  illicit  desire 
springs  all  the  tragedy  of  the  tale.  Dimmesdale 
suffers  for  his  love;  but  the  desire  of  Chilling- 
worth,  because  it  is  base,  and  because  his  charac- 
ter is  essentially  selfish,  is  changed  into  rancorous 
hatred.  And  here  again  the  effect  of  the  man's 
passion  is  twofold:  it  endows  him  with  a  malig- 
nant sympathy  toward  the  object  of  his  hate, 
enabling  him  to  play  on  the  victim's  heart  as  a 
musician  gropes  among  the  strings  of  an  instru- 
ment, and  at  the  same  time  it  severs  him  more 
absolutely  from  the  common  weal,  blotting  out  his 
life,  "  as  completely  as  if  he  indeed  lay  at  the 
bottom  of  the  ocean." 

And  what  shall  we  say  of  the  fair  and  piteous 
Hester  Prynne  ?  Upon  her  the  author  has  lavished 
all  his  art:  he  has  evoked  a  figure  of  womanhood 
whose  memory  haunts  the  mind  like  that  of  an- 
other Helen.  Like  Helen's,  her  passive  beauty 
has  been  the  cause  of  strange  trials  and  pertur- 
bations of  which  she  must  herself  partake;  she  is 
more  human  than  Beatrice,  nobler  and  larger 
than  Marguerite, — a  creation  altogether  fair  and 
wonderful.  Yet  she  too  must  be  caught  in  this 
embroilment  of  evil  and  retribution.  The  Scarlet 
lyCtter  upon  her  breast  is  compared  by  the  author 
to  the  brand  on  the  brow  of  Cain, — a  mark  that 
symbolises  her  utter  separation  from  the  mutual 
joys  and  sorrows  of  the  world.     She  walks  about 


36  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

the  provincial  streets  like  some  lonely  bearer  of  a 
monstrous  fate.  Yet  because  her  guilt  lies  open 
to  the  eyes  of  mankind,  and  because  she  accepts 
the  law  of  our  nature,  striving  to  aid  and  uplift 
the  faltering  hearts  about  her  without  seeking  re- 
lease from  the  curse  in  closer  human  attachments, 
following  unconsciously  the  doctrine  of  the  ancient 
Hindu  book, — 

Therefore  apply  thyself  unto  work  as  thy  duty  bids,  yet 

without  attachment ; 
Even  for  the  profiting  of  the  people  apply  thyself  unto 

work, — 

because  she  renounces  herself  and  the  cravings  of 
self,  we  see  her  gradually  glorified  in  our  presence, 
until  the  blessings  of  all  the  poor  and  afflicted  fol- 
low her  goings  about,  and  the  Scarlet  L/Ctter,  ceas- 
ing to  be  a  stigma  of  scorn,  becomes  "  a  type  of 
something  to  be  sorrowed  over,  and  looked  upon 
with  awe,  yet  with  reverence  too." 

As  a  visible  outcome  of  the  guilty  passion  little 
Pearl  stands  before  us,  an  elfin  child  that  "  lacked 
reference  and  adaptation  to  the  world  into  which 
she  was  born,"  and  that  lived  with  her  mother  in 
a  "  circle  of  seclusion  from  human  society."  But 
the  suffering  of  the  parents  is  efficient  finally  to 
set  their  child  free  from  the  curse;  and  at  the  last, 
when  the  stricken  father  proclaims  his  guilt  in 
public  and  acknowledges  his  violation  of  the  law, 
we  see  Pearl  kissing  him  and  weeping,  and  her 
tears  are  a  pledge  that  she  is  to  grow  up  amid 


HAWTHORNE  3/ 

common  joys  and  griefs,  nor  forever  do  battle  with 
the  world. 

And  in  the  end  what  of  the  love  between  Arthur 
and  Hester?  Was  it  redeemed  of  shame,  and 
made  prophetic  of  a  perfect  union  beyond  the 
grave  ?  Alas,  there  is  something  pitiless  and  aw- 
ful in  the  last  words  of  the  two,  as  the  man  lies 
on  the  scaffold,  dying  in  her  arms: 

"Shall  we  not  meet  again?"  whispered  she,  bending 
her  face  down  close  to  his.  "Shall  we  not  spend  our 
immortal  life  together?  Surely,  surely,  we  ha%'e  ran- 
somed one  another,  with  all  this  woe  !  Thou  lookest  far 
into  eternity,  with  those  bright  dying  eyes !  Then  tell 
me  what  thou  seest?  " 

"Hush,  Hester,  hush!"  said  he,  with  tremulous 
solemnity.  "The  law  we  broke!  —  the  sin  here  so 
awfully  revealed  !  — let  these  alone  be  in  thy  thoughts  ! 
I  fear !  I  fear  I  It  may  be  that,  when  we  forgot  our 
God,  —  when  we  violated  our  reverence  each  for  the 
other's  soiol, — it  was  thenceforth  vain  to  hope  that  we 
could  meet  hereafter,  in  an  everlasting  and  pure 
reunion." 

With  his  next  novel  Hawthorne  enters  upon  a 
new  phase  of  his  art.  Henceforth  he  seems  to 
have  brooded  not  so  much  on  the  immediate  effect 
of  evil  as  on  its  influence  when  handed  down  in  a 
family  from  generation  to  generation,  and  symbo- 
lised (for  his  mind  must  inevitably  speak  through 
symbols)  by  the  ancestral  fatality  of  gurgling 
blood  in  the  throat  or  by  the  print  of  a  bloody 
footstep.     But  whatever  the  symbol  employed,  the 


38  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

moral  outcome  of  the  ancient  wrong  is  always  the 
same:  in  Septim'nis  Feltoti,  in  The  Dolliver  Ro- 
■majice,  and  most  of  all  in  The  House  of  the  Seven 
Gables,  the  infection  of  evil  works  itself  out  in  the 
loneliness  of  the  last  sufferers,  and  their  isolation 
from  the  world. 

It  is  not  my  intention  to  analyse  in  detail  Haw- 
thorne's remaining  novels.  As  for  The  House  of 
the  Seveyt  Gables,  we  know  what  unwearied  care 
the  author  bestowed  on  the  description  of  Miss 
Hepzibah  Pyncheon,  alone  in  the  desolate  family 
mansion,  and  on  her  grotesque  terrors  when  forced 
to  creep  from  her  seclusion;  and  how  finely  he  has 
painted  the  dim  twilight  of  alienation  from  him- 
self and  from  the  world  into  which  the  wretched 
Clifford  was  thrust!  And  Judge  Pyncheon,  the 
portly,  thick-necked,  scheming  man  of  action, — 
who,  in  imagination,  does  not  perceive  him,  at 
last,  sitting  in  the  great  oaken  chair,  fallen  asleep 
with  wide- staring  eyes  while  the  watch  ticks 
noisily  in  his  hand?  Asleep,  but  none  shall 
arouse  him  from  that  slumber,  and  warn  him  that 
the  hour  of  his  many  appointments  is  slipping  b)^ 
What  immutable  mask  of  indifference  has  fallen 
upon  his  face?  "  The  features  are  all  gone:  there 
is  only  the  paleness  of  them  left.  And  how  looks 
it  now?  There  is  no  window!  There  is  no  face! 
An  infinite,  inscrutable  blackness  has  annihilated 
sight!  Where  is  our  universe  ?  All  crumbled 
away  from  us;  and  we,  adrift  in  chaos,  may 
hearken  to  the  gusts  of  homeless  wind,  that  go 


HAWTHORNE  39 

sighing  and  murmuring  about,  in  quest  of  what 
was  once  a  world !  Is  there  no  other  sound  ?  One 
other,  and  a  fearful  one.  It  is  the  ticking  of  the 
Judge's  watch,  which,  ever  since  Hepzibah  left 
the  room  in  search  of  Clifford,  he  has  been  hold- 
ing in  his  hand.  Be  the  cause  what  it  may,  this 
little,  quiet,  never  ceasing  throb  of  Time's  pulse, 
repeating  its  small  strokes  with  such  busy  regu- 
larity, in  Judge  Pyncheon's  motionless  hand,  has 
an  effect  of  terror,  which  we  do  not  find  in  any 
other  accompaniment  of  the  scene." 

Many  times,  while  reading  this  story  and  the 
others  that  involve  an  ancestral  curse,  I  have  been 
struck  by  something  of  similarity  and  contrast  at 
once  between  our  New  England  novelist  and 
^schylus,  the  tragic  poet  of  Athens.  It  should 
seem  at  first  as  if  the  vast  gap  between  the  civilisa- 
tions that  surrounded  the  two  writers  and  the 
utterly  different  forms  of  their  art  would  preclude 
any  real  kinship;  and  yet  I  know  not  where,  un- 
less in  these  late  romances,  any  companion  can  be 
found  in  modern  literature  to  the  Orestean  con- 
ception of  satiety  begetting  insolence,  and  inso- 
lence calling  down  upon  a  family  the  inherited 
curse  of  Ate.  It  may  be  reckoned  the  highest 
praise  of  Hawthorne  that  his  work  can  suggest 
any  such  comparison  with  the  masterpiece  of 
^schylus,  and  not  be  entirely  emptied  of  value 
by  the  juxtaposition.  But  if  ^.schylus  and  Haw- 
thorne are  alike  poets  of  Destiny  and  of  the  fate- 
ful inheritance  of  woe,  their  methods  of  portraying 


40  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

the  power  and  handiwork  of  Ate  are  perfectly  dis- 
tinct. The  Athenian  too  represents  Orestes,  the 
last  inheritor  of  the  curse,  as  cut  off  from  the  fel- 
lowship of  mankind;  but  to  recall  the  Orestean 
tale,  with  all  its  tragic  action  of  murder  and  ma- 
tricide and  frenzy,  is  to  see  in  a  clearer  light  the 
originality  of  Hawthorne's  conception  of  moral 
retribution  in  the  disease  of  inner  solitude.  There 
is  in  the  difference  something,  of  course,  of  the 
constant  distinction  between  classic  and  modern 
art;  but  added  to  this  is  the  creative  idealism  of 
Hawthorne's  rare  and  elusive  genius. 

I  have  dwelt  at  some  length  on  The  Scarlet 
Letter  and  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables,  because 
they  are  undoubtedly  the  greatest  of  Hawthorne's 
romances  and  the  most  thoroughly  permeated 
with  his  peculiar  ideas, — works  so  nearly  perfect, 
withal,  in  artistic  execution  that  the  mind  of  the 
reader  is  overwhelmed  by  a  sense  of  the  power 
and  self-restraint  possible  to  human  genius. 

Over  the  other  two  long  novels  we  must  pass 
lightly,  although  they  are  not  without  bearing  on 
the  subject  in  hand.  The  Blithedale  Romance, 
being  in  every  way  the  slightest  and  most  colour- 
less of  the  novels,  would  perhaps  add  little  to  the 
discussion.  But  in  The  Marble  Faun  it  would  be 
interesting  to  study  the  awakening  of  Donatello's 
half-animal  nature  to  the  fullness  of  human  sym- 
pathies by  his  love  for  Miriam;  and  to  follow 
Miriam  herself,  moving,  with  the  dusky  veil  of 
secrecy  about  her,  amidst  the  crumbling  ruins  and 


HAWTHORNE  4I 

living  realities  of  Rome  like  some  phantom  of  the 
city's  long-buried  tragedies.  Hawthorne  never 
made  known  the  nature  of  the  shadow  that  hov- 
ered over  this  exotic  creature,  and  it  may  be  that 
he  has  here  indulged  in  a  piece  of  pure  mystifi- 
cation; but  for  my  own  part  I  could  never  resist 
the  conviction  that  she  suffers  for  the  same  cause 
as  Shelley's  Beatrice  Cenci.  Granting  such  a  con- 
jecture to  be  well  founded,  it  would  throw  light 
on  our  thesis  to  compare  the  two  innocent  victims 
of  the  same  hideous  crime:  to  observe  the  frenzy 
aroused  in  Beatrice  by  her  wrong,  and  the  passion 
of  her  acts,  and  then  to  look  upon  the  silent,  un- 
earthly Miriam,  snatched  from  the  hopes  of 
humanity,  and  wrapped  in  the  shadows  of  im- 
penetrable isolation.  Powerful  as  is  the  story  of 
the  Cenci,  to  me,  at  least,  the  fate  of  Miriam  is 
replete  with  deeper  woe  and  more  transcendent 
meaning. 

It  is  natural  that  the  reader  of  these  strange 
stories  and  stranger  confessions  should  ask,  al- 
most with  a  shudder,  what  manner  of  man  was 
the  author.  We  do  not  wonder  that  his  family, 
in  their  printed  memoirs,  should  have  endeavoured 
in  every  way  to  set  forth  the  social  and  sunny  side 
of  his  character,  and  should  have  published  the 
Note-Books  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  dispelling 
the  "often-expressed  opinion  that  Mr.  Hawthorne 
was  gloomy  and  morbid."  Let  us  admit  with 
them  that  he  had  but  the  "  inevitable  pensiveness 
and  gravity  "  of  one  to  whom  has  been  given  "the 


42  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

awful  power  of  insight."  No  one  supposes  for  a 
moment  that  Hawthorne's  own  mind  was  clouded 
with  the  remorseful  consciousness  of  secret  guilt; 
and  we  are  ready  to  accept  his  statement  that  he 
had  "  no  love  of  secrecy  and  darkness,"  and  that 
his  extreme  reserve  had  only  made  his  writings 
more  objective. 

Morbid  in  any  proper  sense  of  the  word  Haw- 
thorne cannot  be  called,  except  in  so  far  as 
throughout  his  life  he  cherished  one  dominant 
idea,  and  that  a  peculiar  state  of  mental  isolation 
which  destroys  the  illusions  leading  to  action,  and 
so  tends  at  last  to  weaken  the  will;  and  there  are, 
it  must  be  confessed,  signs  in  the  maturer  age  of 
Hawthorne  that  his  will  actually  succumbed  to 
the  attacks  of  this  subtle  disillusionment.  But 
beyond  this  there  is  in  his  work  no  taint  of  un- 
wholesomeness,  unless  it  be  in  itself  unwholesome 
to  be  possessed  by  one  absorbing  thought.  We 
have  no  reason  to  discredit  his  own  statement: 
"  When  I  write  anything  that  I  know  or  suspect 
is  morbid,  I  feel  as  though  I  had  told  a  lie."  Nor 
was  he  even  a  mystery-monger:  the  mysterious 
element  in  his  stories,  which  affects  some  prosaic 
minds  as  a  taint  of  morbidness,  is  due  to  the  in- 
tense symbolism  of  his  thought,  to  the  intrinsic 
and  unconscious  mingling  of  the  real  and  the 
ideal.  Like  one  of  his  own  characters,  he  could 
"  never  separate  the  idea  from  the  symbol  in 
which  it  manifests  itself."  Yet  the  idea  is  always 
there.     He  is  strong  both  in  analysis  and  general- 


HAWTHORNE  43 

isation;  there  is  no  weakening  of  the  intellectual 
faculties.  Furthermore,  his  pages  are  pervaded 
with  a  subtle  irouical  humour  hardly  compatible 
with  morbidness, — not  a  boisterous  humour  that 
awakens  laughter,  but  the  mood,  half  quizzical 
and  half  pensive,  of  a  man  who  stands  apart  and 
smiles  at  the  foibles  and  pretensions  of  the  world. 
Now  and  then  there  is  something  rare  and  unex- 
pected in  his  wit,  as,  for  example,  in  his  comment 
on  the  Italian  mosquitoes  :  ' '  They  are  bigger  than 
American  mosquitoes  ;  and  if  you  crush  them, 
after  one  of  their  feasts,  it  makes  a  terrific  blood 
spot.  It  is  a  sort  of  suicide  to  kill  them."  And 
if  there  is  to  be  found  in  his  tales  a  fair  share 
of  disagreeable  themes,  yet  he  never  confounds 
things  of  good  and  evil  report,  nor  things  fair  and 
foul;  the  moral  sense  is  intact.  Above  all,  there 
is  no  undue  appeal  to  the  sensations  or  emotions. 
Rather  it  is  true,  as  we  remarked  in  the  begin- 
ning, that  the  lack  of  outward  emotion,  together 
with  their  poignanc}'  of  silent  appeal,  is  a  dis- 
tinguishing mark  of  Hawthorne's  writings.  The 
thought  underlying  all  his  work  is  one  to  trouble 
the  depths  of  our  nature,  and  to  stir  in  us  the 
sombrest  chords  of  brooding,  but  it  does  not  move 
us  to  tears  or  passionate  emotion:  those  affections 
are  dependent  on  our  social  faculties,  and  are 
starved  in  the  rarefied  air  of  his  genius.  Haw- 
thorne indeed  relates  that  the  closing  chapters  of 
The  Scarlet  Letter,  when  read  aloud  to  his  wife, 
sent  her  to  bed  with  a  sick  headache.     And  yet, 


44  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

as  a  judicious  critic  has  observed,  this  may  have 
been  in  part  just  because  the  book  seals  up  the 
fountain  of  tears. 

It  needs  but  a  slight  acquaintance  with  his  own 
letters  and  Note-Books,  and  with  the  anecdotes 
current  about  him,  to  be  assured  that  never  lived 
a  man  to  whom  ordinary  contact  with  his  fellows 
was  more  impossible,  and  that  the  mysterious 
solitude  in  which  his  fictitious  characters  move  is 
a  mere  shadow  of  his  own  imperial  loneliness  of 
soul.  "I  have  made  a  captive  of  myself,"  he 
writes  in  a  letter  of  condolence  to  Longfellow, 
"  and  put  me  into  a  dungeon,  and  now  I  cannot 
find  the  key  to  let  myself  out;  and  if  the  door 
were  open,  I  should  be  almost  afraid  to  come  out. 
You  tell  me  that  you  have  met  with  troubles  and 
changes.  I  know  not  what  these  may  have  been, 
but  I  can  assure  you  that  trouble  is  the  next  best 
thing  to  enjoyment,  and  that  there  is  no  fate  in 
this  world  so  horrible  as  to  have  no  share  in  its 
joys  or  sorrows."  Was  ever  a  stranger  letter  of 
condolence  penned  ? 

Even  the  wider  sympathies  of  the  race  seem  to 
have  been  wanting  in  the  man  as  they  are  want- 
ing in  his  books.  It  is  he  who  said  of  himself, 
"  Destiny  itself  has  often  been  worsted  in  the  at- 
tempt to  get  me  out  to  dinner."  Though  he  lived 
in  the  feverish  ante-bellum  days,  he  was  singu- 
larly lacking  in  the  political  sense,  and  could  look 
with  indifference  on  the  slave  question.  When  at 
last  the  war  broke  out,  and  he  was  forced  into 


HAWTHORNE  45 

sympathies  foreign  to  his  nature,  it  seemed  as  if 
something  gave  way  within  him  beneath  the  un- 
accustomed stress.  It  is  said,  and  with  probable 
truth,  that  the  trouble  of  his  heart  actually  caused 
his  death.  His  novels  are  full  of  brooding  over 
the  past,  but  of  real  historic  sympathy  he  had 
none.  He  has  mentioned  the  old  Concord  fight 
almost  wuth  contempt,  and  in  his  travels  the 
homes  of  great  men  and  the  scenes  of  famous 
deeds  rarely  touched  him  with  enthusiasm. 
Strangest  of  all,  in  a  writer  of  such  moral  depth, 
is  his  coldness  toward  questions  of  religion.  So 
marked  was  this  apathy  that  George  Ripley  is  re- 
ported to  have  said  on  the  subject  of  Hawthorne's 
rehgious  tendencies,  "There  were  none,  no  rev- 
erence in  his  nature."  He  was  not  sceptical,  to 
judge  from  his  occasional  utterances,  but  simply 
indifferent;  the  matter  did  not  interest  him.  He 
was  by  right  of  inheritance  a  Puritan;  all  the  in- 
tensity of  the  Puritan  nature  remained  in  him, 
and  all  the  overwhelming  sense  of  the  heinousness 
of  human  depravity,  but  these,  cut  off  from  the  old 
faith,  took  on  a  new  form  of  their  own.  Where 
the  Puritan  teachers  had  fulminated  the  ven- 
geance of  an  outraged  God,  Hawthorne  saw  only 
the  infinite  isolation  of  the  errant  soul.  In  one  of 
his  stories,  in  many  ways  the  most  important  of 
his  shorter  works,  he  has  chosen  for  his  theme  the 
Unpardonable  Sin,  and  it  is  interesting  to  read  the 
tale  side  by  side  with  some  of  the  denunciatory 
sermons  of  the  older  divines. 


46  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

It  is  not  necessary  to  repeat  the  story  cf  Ethan 
Brand,  the  Hme  burner,  who,  in  the  wilderness  of 
the  mountains,  in  the  silences  of  the  night  while 
he  fed  the  glowing  furnace,  conceived  the  idea 
of  producing  in  himself  the  Unpardonable  Sin. 
Every  one  must  remember  how  at  last  he  found 
his  quest  in  his  own  wretched  heart  that  had  re- 
fused to  beat  in  human  sympathy,  and  had  re- 
garded the  men  about  him  as  so  many  problems 
to  be  studied.  In  the  end,  he  who  had  denied 
the  brotherhood  of  man,  and  spurned  the  guid- 
ance of  the  stars,  and  who  now  refuses  to  sur- 
render his  body  back  to  the  bosom  of  Mother 
Earth, —  in  the  end  he  must  call  on  the  deadly 
element  of  fire  as  his  only  friend,  and  so,  with 
blasphemy  on  his  lips,  flings  himself  into  the 
flaming  oven.  It  is  a  sombre  and  weird  catas- 
trophe, but  the  tragic  power  of  the  scene  lies  in  the 
picture  of  utter  loneliness  in  the  guilty  breast. 
And  would  you  hear  by  its  side  the  denunciations 
of  our  greatest  theologian  against  sin?  Read 
but  a  paragraph  from  the  sermons  of  Jonathan 
Edwards : 

The  God  that  holds  you  over  the  pit  of  hell,  much  as 
one  holds  a  spider  or  some  loathsome  insect  over  the 
fire,  abhors  you,  and  is  dreadfully  provoked.  .  .  . 
If  you  cry  to  God  to  pity  you,  he  will  be  so  far  from 
pitying  you  in  your  doleful  case,  or  showing  you  the 
least  regard  or  favour,  that,  instead  of  that,  he  will  only 
tread  you  underfoot.  .  .  .  And  though  he  will  know 
that  you  cannot  bear  the  weight  of  omnipotence  treading 
upon  you,  yet  he  will  not  regard  that ;  but  he  will  crush 


HAWTHORNE  47 

you  under  his  feet  without  mercy  ;  he  will  crush  out 
your  blood  and  make  it  fly,  and  it  shall  be  spriukled  on 
his  garments,  so  as  to  stain  all  his  raiment. 

Is  it  a  wonder  that  strotig  men  were  moved  to 
tears  and  women  fainted  beneath  such  words? 
Yet  in  the  still  hours  of  meditation  there  is  to  us, 
at  least,  something  more  appalling  in  the  gloomy- 
imaginations  of  Hawthorne,  because  they  are 
founded  more  certainly  on  everlasting  truth. 

I  have  spoken  as  if  the  mental  attitude  of  Haw- 
thorne was  one  common  to  the  race,  however  it 
may  be  exaggerated  in  form  by  his  own  inner 
vision;  and  to  us  of  the  western  world,  over  whom 
have  passed  centuries  of  Christian  brooding,  and 
who  find  ourselves  suddenly  cut  loose  from  the 
consolation  of  Christian  faith,  his  voice  may  well 
seem  the  utterance  of  universal  experience,  and 
we  may  be  even  justified  in  assuming  that  his 
words  have  at  last  expressed  what  has  long  slum- 
bered in  human  consciousness.  His  was  not  the 
bitterness,  the  fierce  indignation  of  loneliness,  that 
devoured  the  heart  of  Swift;  nor  yet  the  terror  of 
a  soul  like  Cowper's,  that  believed  itself  guilty  of 
the  unpardonable  sin,  and  therefore  condemned  to 
everlasting  exile  and  torment;  nor  Byron's  per- 
sonal rancour  and  hatred  of  society;  nor  the 
ecstasy  of  Thomas  h  Kenipis,  whose  spirit  was 
rapt  away  out  of  the  turmoil  of  existence;  but 
rather  an  intensification  of  the  solitude  that  in- 
vests the  modern  world,  and  by  right  f(jund  its 
deepest  expression  in  the   New  England  heart. 


48  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

Not  with  impunity  had  the  human  race  for  ages 
dwelt  on  the  eternal  welfare  of  the  soul;  for  from 
such  meditation  the  sense  of  personal  importance 
had  become  exacerbated  to  an  extraordinary  de- 
gree.    What  could  result  from  such  teaching  as 
that  of  Jonathan  Edwards   but   an  extravagant 
sense  of  individual  existence,  as  if  the  moral  gov- 
ernance of  the  world  revolved  about  the  action  of 
each  mortal  soul  ?     And  when  the  alluring  faith 
attendant  on  this  form  of  introspection  paled,  as  it 
did  during  the  so-called  transcendental  movement 
into  which  Hawthorne  was  born,  there  resulted 
necessarily  a  feeling  of  anguish  and  bereavement 
more  tragic  than  any  previous  moral  stage  through 
which  the  world  had  passed.     The  loneliness  of 
the  individual,  which  had  been  vaguely  felt  and 
lamented  by  poets  and  philosophers  of  the  past, 
took  on  a  poignancy  altogether  unexampled.     It 
needed  but  an  artist  with  the  vision  of  Hawthorne 
to  represent  this  feeling  as  the  one  tragic  calamity 
of  mortal  life,  as  the  great  primeval  curse  of  sin. 
What  lay  dormant  in  the  teaching  of  Christianity 
became  the  universal  protest  of  the  human  heart. 
In  no  way  can  we  better  estimate  the  univers- 
ality, and  at  the  same  time  the  modern  note, 
of   Hawthorne's  solitude  than  by  turning  for  a 
moment  to  the  literature  of  the  far-off  Ganges. 
There,  too,  on  the  banks  of  the  holy  river,  men 
used  much  to  ponder  on  the  life  of  the  human 
soul  in  its  restless  wandering  from  birth  to  birth; 
and  in  their  books  we  may  read  of  a  loneliness  as 


HAWTHORNE  49 

profound  as  Hawthorne's,  though  quite  distinct 
in  character.  To  them,  also,  we  are  born  alone, 
we  die  alone,  and  alone  we  reap  the  fruits  of  our 
good  and  evil  deeds.  The  dearest  ties  of  our 
earthly  existence  are  as  meaningless  and  transient 
as  the  meeting  of  spar  with  drifting  spar  on  the 
ocean  waves.  Yet  in  all  this  it  is  the  isolation  of  the 
soul  from  the  source  of  universal  life  that  troubles 
human  thought;  there  is  no  cry  of  personal  an- 
guish here,  such  as  arises  from  Christianity,  for 
the  loss  of  individuality  is  ever  craved  by  the 
Hindu  as  the  highest  good.  And  besides  this 
distinction  between  the  Western  and  Eastern 
forms  of  what  may  be  called  secular  solitude,  the 
Hindu  carried  the  idea  into  abstract  realms 
whither  no  Occidental  can  penetrate. 

HE,  in  that  solitude  before 
The  world  was,  looked  the  wide  void  o'er 
And  nothing  saw,  and  said,  Lo,  I 
Alone  ! — and  still  we  echo  the  lone  cry. 

Thereat  He  feared,  and  still  we  fear 
In  solitude  when  naught  is  near : 
And,  Lo,  He  said,  myself  alone  ! 
What  cause  of  dread  when  second  is  not  known ! 

But  into  this  dim  region  of  Oriental  mysticism 
we  have  no  reason  to  intrude.  We  may  at  least 
count  it  among  the  honours  of  our  literature  that 
it  was  left  for  a  denizen  of  this  far  Western  land, 
living  in  the  midst  of  a  late-born  and  confused 
civili-sation,  to  give  artistic  form  to  a  thought  that, 


50  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

in  fluctuating  form,  has  troubled  the  minds  of 
philosophers  from  the  beginning.  Other  authors 
may  be  greater  in  so  far  as  they  touch  our  passions 
more  profoundly,  but  to  the  solitude  of  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne  we  owe  the  most  perfect  utterance  of 
a  feeling  that  must  seem  to  us  now  as  old  and  as 
deep  as  life  itself. 

It  would  be  easy  to  explain  Hawthorne's  pe- 
culiar temperament,  after  the  modern  fashion,  by 
reference  to  heredity  and  environment.  No  doubt 
there  was  a  strain  of  eccentricity  in  the  family. 
He  himself  tells  of  a  cousin  who  made  a  spittoon 
out  of  the  skull  of  his  enemy;  and  it  is  natural 
that  a  descendant  of  the  old  Puritan  witch  judge 
should  portray  the  weird  and  grotesque  aspects  of 
life.  Probably  this  native  tendency  was  increased 
by  the  circumstances  that  surrounded  his  youth: 
the  seclusion  of  his  mother's  life  ;  his  boyhood  on 
Lake  Sebago,  where,  as  he  says,  he  first  got  his 
"cursed  habit  of  solitude;"  and  the  long  years 
during  which  he  lived  as  a  hermit  in  Salem. 
But,  after  all,  these  external  matters,  and  even 
the  effect  of  heredity  so  far  as  we  can  fathom  it, 
explain  little  or  nothing.  A  thousand  other  men 
might  have  written  his  books  if  their  source  lay 
in  such  antecedents.  Behind  it  all  was  the  dae- 
monic force  of  the  man  himself,  the  everlasting 
mystery  of  genius  habiting  in  his  brain,  and 
choosing  him  to  be  an  exemplar  and  interpreter 
of  the  inviolable  individuality  in  which  lie  the 
pain  and  glory  of  our  human  estate. 


thk  origins  of  hawthorne  and 
poe; 

We  are  credibly  told  that  in  years  not  so  very 
long  past  young  women  and  even  grave  men  used 
to  read  the  Gothic  tales  of  Ann  Radcli£Fe  vi^ith 
tense  brows  and  trembling  lips;  and  the  essays  of 
Carlyle  still  stand  a  voluble  witness  to  prove  how 
seriously  the  grotesque  marvels  of  German  ro- 
mance were  once  accepted  in  England.  Mrs. 
RadclifFe  is  no  doubt  read  occasionally  to-day, 
and  the  indefatigable  Mr.  Lang  has  even  at- 
tempted to  reinstate  her  in  popular  favour.  But 
her  most  generous  admirer  could  hardly  aver  that 
she  was  anything  more  to  him  than  a  curious 
amusement;  the  horror  of  her  tales  has  vanished 
away  like  the  moonlight  she  was  so  fond  of  de- 
scribing. And  as  for  Tieck  and  Wackenroder 
and  all  that  dim  romantic  crew  of  Teuton  Shcrm 
and  Drang — not  even  an  Andrew  Lang  has  arisen 
for  them. 

It  is  a  matter  for  reflection,  therefore,  that  in 
this  country  a  new  life  of  Hawthorne  '  should  be 

'  Nathaniel  Haivlhotme.  By  George  E.  Woodberry. 
[American  Men  of  Letters.]  Boston  :  Houghton,  Mif- 
flin &  Co. 

51 


52  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

something  of  a  literary  event  and  that  there  should 
be  a  sufficient  public  to  warrant  the  issue  of  two 
new  and  elaborate  editions  of  Poe ; '  for  at  first 
thought  it  might  seem  that  both  Hawthorne  and 
Poe  fall  in  the  same  class  with  those  forgotten 
weavers  of  moonlight  and  mysticism.  What  is  it, 
indeed,  that  gives  vitality  to  their  work  and  sepa- 
rates it  from  the  ephemeral  product  of  English 
and  German  Gothicism?  More  than  that:  Why 
is  it  that  the  only  two  writers  of  America  who 
have  won  almost  universal  renown  as  artists  are 
these  romancers,  each  of  whom  is,  after  his  own 
manner,  a  sovereign  in  that  strange  region  of 
emotion  which  we  name  the  weird  ?  Other  work 
they  have  done,  and  done  well,  but  when  we  call 
to  mind  their  distinguishing  productions  we  think 
first  of  such  scenes  as  T/ie  Fall  of  the  House  of 
Usher,  The  Raven,  and  The  Sleeper,  or  of  such 
characters  as  Arthur  Dimmesdale  with  his  morbid 
remorse  and  unearthly  sufferings,  the  dreamlike 
existence  of  Clifford,  the  hideous  unexplained 
mystery  of  Miriam's  wrong,  and  the  awful  search 
of  Ethan  Brand  —  scenes  and  characters  which 
belong  to  the  real  world,  for  they  appeal  to  a 
sympathetic  chord  in  our  own  breasts,  but  which 
are  yet  quite  overlaid  with  some  insistent  shadow 
of  the  fantastic  realm  of  symbolism, 

Hawthorne  ascribes  the  superiority  of  Nature's 
work  over  man's  to  the  fact  "  that  the  former 

'  Published  respectively  by  Thomas  Y.  Crowell  &  Co. 
and  by  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons. 


HAWTHORNE  AND   POE  53 

works  from  the  innermost  germ,  while  the  latter 
works  merely  superficially,"  and  the  same  ex- 
planation may  be  given  of  the  genuineness  of  his 
own  work  and  Poe's  in  comparison  with  the  un- 
reality of  Mrs.  RadclifFe  or  Tieck;  the  weird,  un- 
earthly substance  moulded  by  their  genius  is  from 
the  innermost  core  of  the  national  consciousness. 
Their  achievement  is  not  like  the  Gothic  novel 
introduced  into  England  by  Horace  Walpole,  a 
mere  dilettante;  there  is  in  them  very  little  of  that 
recrudescence  of  mediaeval  superstition  and  gloom 
which  marked  the  rise  of  romanticism  in  Europe, 
little  or  nothing  of  the  knights  and  ladies,  turrets 
and  dungeons  and  all  that  tawdry  paraphernalia, 
and,  fortunately  for  their  reputation,  no  taint  of 
that  peculiar  form  of  sentimentalism  which  per- 
vades the  German  Herzensergiessungen  like  the 
odour  of  Schiller's  decaying  apples.  Their  work 
is  the  last  efflorescence  of  a  tradition  handed  down 
to  them  unbroken  from  the  earliest  Colonial  days, 
and  that  tradition  was  the  voice  of  a  stern  and  in- 
domitable moral  character.  The  unearthly  visions 
of  Poe  and  Hawthorne  are  in  no  wise  the  result 
of  literary  whim  or  of  unbridled  individualism, 
but  are  deep-rooted  in  American  history.  Neither 
Professor  Woodberry  in  his  Life  of  Hawthorne 
nor  Professor  Harrison  in  his  Life  of  Poe  has,  it 
seems  to  me,  brought  out  with  due  emphasis  these 
spiritual  origins  of  a  school  of  romance  which  is 
so  unique  in  its  way  as  to  have  made  for  itself  a 
sure  place  in  the  literature  of  the  world. 


54  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

The  name  of  Hawthorne  carries  us  back  at  once 
to  those  grim  days  of  his  ancestor  in  Salem  Village 
when  for  a  season  almost  the  whole  community 
gave  itself  up  to  the  frenzy  of  witch  hunting.  In 
the  earlier  days  the  superstitions  of  England  were 
concerned  chiefly  with  the  fairy  folk  of  hearth  and 
field,  a  quaint  people  commonly,  and  kindly  dis- 
posed, if  mischievous.  But  with  the  advent  of 
Puritanism  came  a  change;  the  fair  and  frolicsome 
play  of  the  fancy  was  discredited  and  the  starved 
imagination  had  its  revenge.  In  place  of  the 
elves  and  goblins  of  a  freer  age,  instead  of  "Robin 
Goodfellow,  the  spoorn,  the  mau-in-the-oak,  the 
hellwain,  the  firedrake,  the  puckle  "  and  all  that 
antic  crew,  the  imagination  now  evoked  the  ter- 
rific spectre  of  the  Devil  and  attributed  to  his  per- 
sonal agency  all  the  mishaps  of  life.  Hence  it  is 
that  witchcraft  became  so  much  more  prominent 
with  the  Reformation  and  reached  its  height 
where  Puritan  feelings  prevailed.  On  the  one 
hand  it  was  employed  by  the  Roman  Church  as 
an  aid  in  its  exterminating  fight  with  the  Wal- 
denses  and  other  heretics— the  good  monks  no 
doubt  being  easily  persuaded,  where  persuasion 
was  necessary,  that  the  ascetic  revolt  against  the 
ofiice  of  the  imagination  in  worship  was  of  dia- 
bolic origin— and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Protest- 
ants, and  particularly  the  Puritans  with  their 
morbid  horror  of  sin,  were  quick  to  accredit  to  the 
author  of  sin  every  phenomenon  they  could  not 
understand.     Witchcraft,  to  be  sure,  is  as  old  as 


HAWTHORNE   AND    POE  55 

history',  and  we  need  go  no  further  abroad  than 
the  classic  poets  for  tales  of  the  most  abominable 
night  hags.  But  there  is  this  difference  between 
such  monsters  as  Lucan's  Erichtho  and  the  abor- 
tions of  Christian  demouology:  Erichtho  may 
haunt  the  sepulchres  and  breathe  into  the  cold 
mouths  of  the  dead  the  dark  secret  she  would 
transmit  to  the  Shades,  but  in  the  end  she  is  only 
a  product  of  the  imagination  brooding  on  things 
unclean  and  hideous;  there  is  in  the  dread  and  re- 
pugnance she  inspires  no  such  added  horror  as 
that  which  the  Christian  felt  at  the  thought  of  a 
soul  leagued  for  infamous  ends  with  the  Prince  of 
Hell  and  doomed  as  a  rebel  against  God  to  ever- 
lasting tortures. 

Considering  the  history  of  the  Puritan  emi- 
grants we  shall  not  be  surprised  to  find  these  su- 
perstitions breaking  out  with  peculiar  virulence 
in  the  New  World.  Persecution  and  insult  at 
home  had  not  tended  to  soften  their  temper,  nor 
did  flight  across  a  waste  of  perilous  waters  to  a 
wilderness  where  everything  was  strange  and  un- 
explored bring  light  and  cheerfulness  to  their 
imagination.  In  England  at  least  their  morbid 
intensity  was  to  some  extent  modified  by  contact 
with  the  worldly  life  about  them;  in  their  new 
home  they  were  completely  given  up  to  the  work- 
ing out  of  their  stern  purposes.  Terrors  and  diffi- 
culties only  added  fuel  to  their  zeal.  "Our  faithers 
were  Englishmen  which  came  over  this  great 
ocean  and  were  ready  to  perish  in  this  wilder- 


56  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

ness,"  says  old  Governor  Bradford;  and  "  with 
what  difficulties  [they]  wrastled  in  going  throug 
these  things,"  we  may  read  in  all  our  school- 
books.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  these  hardships  and 
these  bitterly-won  victories  increased  the  sternness 
and  unyieldingness  of  the  New  England  Puritans, 
but  perhaps  we  do  not  often  consider  the  influence 
exerted  on  their  imaginations  by  the  wild  country 
and  wilder  "salvages,"  as  they  called  the  red  men, 
that  now  engaged  their  attention.  They  no  longer 
beheld  about  them  the  pleasant  vales  and  green 
hills  of  Old  England,  which  the  long  habitation  of 
man  had  rendered  almost  human,  but  the  vast  and 
pathless  forests  of  the  wilderness,  where  nature  ap- 
peared under  a  new  and  forbidding  aspect.  There 
is  at  the  best  something  weird  and  uncannny 
about  the  great  woods  into  whose  depths  the  eye 
cannot  penetrate  and  from  whose  interwoven 
shadows,  especially  when  night  has  fallen  and  the 
ear  has  grown  painfully  alert,  come  forth  at  inter- 
vals sounds  that  seem  to  indicate  the  activity  of 
some  nameless  secret  life  within  the  darkness. 
What  then  must  have  been  the  feelings  of  the 
New  England  farmer  as  perchance  he  made  his 
way  homeward  at  sundown  along  the  border  of 
the  gloomy  forest.  The  kindly  fancy  of  his  an- 
cestors who  peopled  the  woods  with  mischievous 
goblins  had  yielded  to  his  belief  in  the  extended 
powers  of  evil.  In  these  deep  shadows  he  knew 
not  but  the  very  enemy  of  God  might  be  lurking 
to  lure  him  to  destruction.     It  was  no  pleasant 


HAWTHORNE   AND   POE  57 

waldeinsamkeit  he  felt,  such  as  romantic  poets 
love  to  indulge,  but  awe  and  ghostly  terror. 

And  this  feeling  was  exaggerated  by  the  actual 
savages  who  inhabited  the  woods.  The  settlers 
were  for  the  most  part  thoroughly  convinced  that 
these  poor,  brutal  denizens  of  the  wilderness  were 
under  the  special  tutelage  of  Satan.  In  times 
of  distress  the  colonists  were  ready  to  charge  all 
their  calamities  to  the  machinations  of  an  infernal 
conspiracy. 

It  was  afterward  by /A^w  [the  Indians]  confessed,  [says 
Cotton  Mather  in  his  Magnalia\  that  upon  the  arrival 
of  the  English  in  these  parts,  the  Indians  employed 
their  sorcerers,  whom  they  call  powaws,  like  Balaam^  to 
curse  them,  and  let  loose  their  demons  upon  them,  to 
shipwreck  them,  to  distract  them,  to  poison  them,  or 
any  way  to  ruin  them.  All  the  noted  powaws  in  the 
country  spent  three  days  together  in  diabolical  conjura- 
tions, to  obtain  the  assistance  of  the  devils  against  the 
settlement  of  these  our  English. 

It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  when  the  de- 
lusion of  witchcraft  fell  upon  these  people  it  should 
have  assumed  a  peculiarly  tragic  aspect.  They 
were  dwelling  in  the  midst  of  hostile  demonic 
powers,  and,  feeling  themselves  attacked,  they 
turned  upon  the  enemy  with  all  the  strength  and 
intensity  of  their  .souls.  And  how  real  and  ma- 
terial the  phenomena  appeared  to  the  bewildered 
onlookers  may  be  gathered  from  this  sulfurous 
account  written  by  an  eyewitness  of  the  sufferings 
of  one  of  the  victims: 


58  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

Margaret  Rule  would  sometimes  have  her  jaws  forcibly- 
pulled  open,  whereupon  something  invisible  would  be 
poured  down  her  throat:  we  all  saw  her  swallow,  and 
yet  we  saw  her  try  all  she  could,  by  spitting,  coughing, 
and  shrieking,  that  she  might  not  swallow;  but  one  time 
the  standers-by  plainly  saw  something  of  that  odd  liquor 
itself  on  the  outside  of  her  neck;  she  cried  out  of  it,  as 
if  scalding  brimstone  were  poured  into  her,  and  the 
whole  house  would  immediately  scent  so  hot  of  brim- 
stone that  we  were  scarce  able  to  endure  it. 

Under  the  stress  of  this  morbid  excitement  the 
good  people  of  Salem  and  the  neighbourhood 
were  thrown  into  a  frenzy  of  fear;  crops  were 
abandoned,  business  stood  still,  and  the  only- 
matters  considered  were  the  horrible  persecutions 
of  Satan  in  their  midst.  The  general  feeling  of 
alarm  was  aggravated  to  something  like  des- 
peration when  the  Rev.  Deodat  lyawson  in  the 
meeting-house  of  Salem  village  preached  an  in- 
flammatory sermon  in  which  he  charged  the 
otitburst  of  the  infernal  powers  directly  to  the  sins 
of  the  people. 

You  are  therefore  to  be  deeply  humbled,  [he  said,] 
and  sit  in  the  dust,  considering  the  signal  hand  of  God 
in  singling  out  this  place,  this  poor  village,  for  the  first 
seat  of  Satan's  tyranny,  and  to  make  it  (as  'twere)  the 
rendezvous  of  devils,  where  they  muster  their  infernal 
forces;  appearing  to  the  aiBicted  as  coming  armed  to 
carry  on  their  malicious  designs  against  the  bodies,  and, 
if  God  in  mercy  prevent  not,  against  the  souls  of  many 
in  this  place. 

No  wonder  that  the  people  did  actually  believe 
"  that  the  devils  were  walking  about  our  streets 


HAWTHORNE   AND   POE  59 

with  lengthened  chains,  making  a  dreadful  noise 
in  our  ears;  and  brimstone  (even  without  a  meta- 
phor) was  making  a  horrid  and  a  hellish  stench 
in  our  nostrils." 

To  stop  these  terrible  inroads  of  Satan  a  special 
court  was  created,  before  which  those  previously 
examined  were  tried.  Those  found, guilty  were 
hanged  on  a  conspicuous  eminence  which  thus 
acquired  the  ominous  title  of  witch-hill;  and  how 
awful  was  the  spectacle  there  presented  to  the 
panic-stricken  people  ma}'  be  gathered  from  the 
pious  ejaculation  of  the  Reverend  Mr.  Noyes, 
"  What  a  sad  thing  it  is  to  see  eight  firebrands  of 
hell  hanging  there  !  "  The  cruelty  engendered  by 
this  feeling  of  insecurity  is  well  indicated  by  the 
treatment  of  Giles  Corey,  who,  refusing  to  plead 
either  guilty  or  not  guilty,  was  subjected  to  the 
peine  dure  et forte,  as  the  tale  is  related  in  Long- 
fellow's New  England  Tragedy;  but  Longfellow 
does  not  relate  what  we  are  told  in  a  ballad  of  the 
period,  that  when  from  the  oppression  of  the  stone 
on  his  chest  Corey's  tongue  protruded  it  was 
rudely  thrust  back  by  the  staff  of  a  bystander. 

In  due  time  this  "  hellish  molestation,"  as  one 
of  the  persecuted  called  it,  came  to  a  sudden  end; 
but  not  before  twenty  victims  had  suffered  death, 
many  had  died  in  jail,  hundreds  had  endured  im- 
prisonment in  its  worst  forms,  whole  families  had 
been  impoverished,  and  a  moral  impression  had 
been  made  upon  the  community  which  nothing 
could  efface.     The  modern  historian  of  the  delu- 


60  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

sion  tells  us  that  a  sort  of  curse  still  rests  on  the 
immediate  scene  of  these  tragic  events  and  that 
neglect  and  desertion  still  brood  on  the  accursed 
spot. 

Were  we  to  go  no  further  than  this  episode  of 
Salem  history  we  should  find  it  easy  to  explain 
by  inheritance  that  mystic  brooding  over  the  dark 
and  intricate  effects  of  sin  which  the  descendant 
of  old  John  Hathorne  has  made  the  substance  of 
his  romance,  or  to  account  for  the  realism  that 
underlies  the  wild  fantasies  of  Poe.  And  we  need 
only  to  dip  into  Cotton  Mather's  voluminous  rec- 
ord of  the  dealings  of  Providence  in  America  to 
see  how  intensely  the  mind  of  the  Puritans  was 
occupied  with  unearthly  matters  and  what  a  leg- 
acy of  emotions  approaching  the  weird  was  left  by 
them  to  posterity.  When  the  faith  of  these  mili- 
tant saints  was  untroubled  it  often  assumed  a 
sweetness  and  fullness  of  spiritual  content  that 
might  even  pass  into  rapturous  delight.  But  al- 
ways this  intoxicating  joy  bordered  on  the  region 
of  awe — the  awe  of  a  soul  in  the  presence  of  the 
great  and  ineffable  mysteries  of  holiness;  and  the 
life  of  Thomas  Shepard,  which  Mather  calls  "a 
trembling  walk  with  God''  may  not  unfitly  be 
taken  to  illustrate  the  peculiar  temper  of  their  re- 
ligion. And  if  in  the  wisest  and  sanest  of  the 
Puritan  Fathers  this  trembling  solicitude  was 
never  far  away,  there  were  others  in  whom  the 
fear  of  the  Lord  became  a  mania  of  terror.  Con- 
sider what  the  impression  on  the  minds  of  child- 


HAWTHORNE  AND   POE  6l 

ren  must  have  been  when  in  the  midst  of  their 
innocent  sport  the  awful  apparition  of  the  Rev. 
James  Noyes  stood  before  them  and  rebuked  them 
into  silence  with  these  solemn  words:  "  Cousins, 
I  wonder  you  can  be  so  merry,  unless  you  are 
sure  of  your  salvation!  "  Consider  the  spiritual 
state  of  a  young  man,  celebrated  for  his  godliness, 
who  could  note  down  in  his  diary  with  curious 
precision:  "I  was  almost  in  the  suburbs  of  hell  aW 
day." 

Literature,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  could 
not  well  flourish  among  a  people  who  saw  in  the 
plastic  imagination  a  mere  seduction  of  the  senses, 
and  whose  intellectual  life  was  thus  absorbed  in 
theological  speculation.  To  be  sure,  a  good  deal 
of  verse  was  written  and  even  printed  in  early 
Colonial  days;  but  of  all  the  poets  of  that  age  only 
one  attained  any  real  celebrity  and  has  in  a  way 
lived  on  into  the  present.  Michael  Wigglesworth, 
the  faithful  pastor  of  Maiden,  where  in  the  odour 
of  sanctity  he  died  in  1705,  is  described  as  "  a 
little  feeble  shadow  of  a  man  ;"  but  his  diminutive 
frame  harboured  a  mighty  spirit.  His  poems 
breathed  the  very  quintessence  of  Puritan  faith, 
and  as  such  obtained  immediate  and  extraordi- 
nary popularity.  Professor  Tyler  calculates  that 
in  the  first  year  of  publication  his  Day  of  Doom 
was  purchased  by  at  least  one  in  every  thirty-five 
persons  of  New  England;  printed  as  a  common 
ballad  it  was  hawked  everywhere  about  the  coun- 
try, and  its  lugubrious  stanzas  were  even  taught 


62  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

to  children  along  with  the  catechism.  As  late  as 
the  year  1828  an  essayist  declared  that  many  an 
aged  person  of  his  acquaintance  could  still  repeat 
the  poem,  though  they  might  not  have  seen  a  copy 
of  it  since  the}'  were  in  leading  strings;  and 
in  his  own  time  Cotton  Mather  had  thought  it 
might  "  perhaps  find  our  children  till  the  day  it- 
self arrives  " — which  God  forbid. 

The  strength  of  Master  Wigglesworth's  genius, 
in  this  picture  of  the  Day  of  Doom,  is,  as  we 
should  expect,  devoted  to  those  who 

void  of  tears,  but  fill'd  with  fears, 

and  dreadful  expectation 
Of  endless  pains  and  scalding  flames, 

stand  waiting  for  Damnation. 

One  after  another  the  various  kinds  of  sinners  are 
arraigned  at  the  bar  and  receive  their  due  reward. 
Most  hideous  and  most  famous  of  all  are  the 
stanzas  that  describe  the  pleading  and  condemna- 
tion of  unbaptised  infants.  As  an  expression  of 
the  grotesque  in  literature  they  are  not  without  a 
kind  of  crude  power;  as  the  voice  of  a  real  and 
tremendously  earnest  faith  they  elude  the  grasp 
of  a  modern  mind,  one  can  onl)'  shudder  and  avert 
his  eyes.  We  contrast  with  some  curiosity  and 
no  little  bewilderment  the  unflinching  frankness 
of  this  earlier  Calvinist  with  the  shifting  creed 
of  a  recent  Calviuistic  convention  which  has  at- 
tempted to  explain  away  the  catechism's  abandon- 
ment of  non-elect   infants.     Yet  Wigglesworth, 


HAWTHORNE   AND   POE  63 

like  the  Presbyterians  of  to-day,  had  his  moment 
of  compunction  for  the  poor  souls  who 

from  the  womb  unto  the  tomb 
Were  straightway  carried; — 

he  at  least  allowed  to  them  "  the  easiest  room  in 
hell!  "  Those  simple  words  have  of  recent  years 
acquired  a  certain  notoriety  through  hterary  hand 
books;  indeed,  for  naked  and  appalling  realism  of 
horror,  when  all  is  considered,  it  would  not  be 
easy  to  find  a  verse  to  surpass  them. 

Wigglesworth's  rhymes  were,  as  I  said,  the 
intellectual  food  of  the  young,  and  some  such 
strong  meat  would  seem  necessary  to  prepare 
them  for  the  sermons  that  nourished  their  man- 
hood. And  at  least  one  of  these  sermons,  Jona- 
than Edwards's  famous  Enfield  discourse  of 
Siwiers  hi  the  Hands  of  a?i  Angry  God,  has 
gained  the  unenviable  reputation  of  being  perhaps 
the  most  tremendous  and  uncompromising  enun- 
ciation ever  made  of  the  gloomier  side  of  Calvin- 
ism. His  picture  of  worldly  men  hanging  over 
the  pit  of  hell  "  by  a  slender  thread,  with  the 
flames  of  divine  wrath  flashing  about  it,  and 
ready  every  moment  to  singe  it  and  burn  it  asun- 
der," has  become  classical  in  its  own  way. 

After  the  death  of  Edwards,  in  1758,  the  heart 
of  the  country  became  more  and  more  absorbed  in 
the  impending  conflict  of  the  Revolution.  For 
a  while,  at  least,  religion  and  the  terrors  of  dam- 
nation must  give  place  to  the  more  imminent  peril 


64  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

of  political  subjugation.  In  New  England  that 
other  phase  of  Puritanism,  the  spirit  that  had  led 
Cromwell  and  his  Ironsides  to  victory,  and  had 
established  the  liberties  of  the  English  constitu- 
tion, came  to  the  foreground,  and  for  a  time  the 
political  pamphlet  usurped  the  place  of  the  ser- 
mon. But  even  then  literature  did  not  entirely 
vanish;  and  at  intervals  through  the  rasping 
cries  of  revolution  one  may  catch  a  note  of  that 
pensiveuess  or  gloom,  that  habitual  dwelling  on 
the  supernatural  significance  of  life,  which  had 
come  to  be  the  dominant  intellectual  tone  of  the 
country.  Indeed,  it  was  this  violent  wrenching 
of  the  national  consciousness  into  new  fields  which 
brought  about  the  change  from  the  old  supernat- 
urahsm  of  religion  to  the  shadowy  symbolism  of 
literature  as  exemplified  in  Hawthorne  and  Poe. 
We  seem  to  see  the  beginning  of  this  new  spirit 
in  the  haunting  pathos  that  throbs  through  the 
anonymous  ballad  of  Nathari  Hale  : 

The  breezes  went  steadily  through  the  tall  pines, 
A  saying.  "  Oh!  hu-ush!  "  a  saying,  "Oh!  hu-ush!  " 

As  stilly  stole  by  a  bold  legion  of  horse, 
For  Hale  in  the  bush,  for  Hale  in  the  bush. 

"  Keep  still,"  said  the  thrush  as  she  nestled  her  young, 
In  a  nest  by  the  road;  in  a  nest  by  the  road; 

•'  For  the  tyrants  are  near  and  with  them  appear 

What  bodes  us  no  good;  what  bodes  us  no  good." 

Of  all  the  gentlemen— and  women,  too — who 
wrote  verse  in  those  stirring  times  only  one  can 


HAWTHORNE   AND   POE  6$ 

lay  claim  to  any  genuine  poetic  inspiration, 
Philip  Freneau,  of  New  Jersey,  has  even  yet  a 
slight  hold  on  the  memory  of  the  reading  public, 
and  would  be  more  read  and  better  known  were 
his  works  subjected  to  proper  selection  and  edit- 
ing. Like  all  the  other  versifiers  of  the  period 
Freneau  was  caught  in  the  wild  vortex  of  politi- 
cal affairs,  and,  against  the  protests  of  his  truer 
nature  as  he  himself  avows,  gave  up  the  gentler 
muses  for  the  raucous  voice  of  satire.  But  here 
and  there  through  his  works  we  find  a  suggestion 
of  what  he  might  have  accomplished  had  he  fallen 
on  better  times.  In  him  we  catch  perhaps  the 
first  note  of  the  weird  as  it  appears  in  our  later 
literature,  of  that  transition  of  overwhelming 
superstition  into  shadowy  haunting  symbolism. 
Not  unseldom  a  stanza,  or  a  single  line  it  may 
be,  wakes  an  echo  in  the  mind  curiously  like  Poe. 
Such,  for  instance,  is  the  spectral  beauty  of  that 
stanza  of  T/ie  Indian  Btcrymg  Ground,  whose  last 
line,  as  Poe  once  pointed  out,  was  borrowed  intact, 
and  never  acknowledged,  by  Campbell: 

By  midnight  moons,  o'er  moistening  dews, 
In  vestments  for  the  chase  arrayed, 

The  hunter  still  the  deer  pursues, 
The  hunter  and  the  deer — a  shade. 

A  glance  at  the  titles  of  Freneau' s  poems  would 
show  how  persistently,  when  relieved  from  the 
immediate  pressure  of  politics,  his  mind  reverted 
to  subjects  of  decay  and  quiet  dissolution.     In 

5 


66  SHELBOURNE   ESSAYS 

one  of  his  longer  poems,  The  House  of  Death,  he 
has  just  failed  of  achieving  a  work  which  might 
have  come  from  the  brain  of  Poe  himself.  At 
the  hour  of  midnight  the  poet  dreams  that  he 
wanders  over  a  desolate  country : 

Dark  was  the  sky,  and  not  one  friendly  star 
Shone  from  the  zenith  or  horizon,  clear, 

Mist  sate  upon  the  woods,  and  darkness  rode 
In  her  black  chariot,  with  a  wild  career. 

And  from  the  woods  the  late  resounding  note 
Issued  of  the  loquacious  whip-poor-will, 

Hoarse,  howling  dogs,  and  nightly  roving  wolves 
Clamour'd  from  far  off  cliffs  invisible. 

At  last  he  finds  himself  in  the  presence  of  "  a 
noble  dome  raised  fair  and  high,"  standing  in  the 
midst  of  "  a  mournftil  garden  of  autumnal  hue  ": 

The  poppy  there,  companion  to  repose, 
Displayed  her  blossoms  that  began  to  fall, 

And  here  the  purple  amaranthus  rose 

With  mint  strong  scented,  for  the  funeral. 

In  this  strange  spot,  which  has  something  of 
the  unearthly  qualities  of  Rappaccini's  garden  or 
Poe's  spectral  landscapes,  stands  the  desolate 
home  of  a  young  man  whose  beloved  consort 
death  has  recently  snatched  away,  and  who  now 
harbours  as  a  guest  the  grisly  person  of  Death 
himself.  Death,  stretched  on  the  couch  and  sur- 
rounded by  ghoulish  phantoms,  lies  dying.  Over 
the  conversation  that  ensues  and  the  blasphemies 
of  the  ghastly  sufferer  we  may  pass  without  de- 


HAWTHORNE   AND    POE  6/ 

laying.  At  last  after  Death  has  composed  his  own 
epitaph  and  described  the  tomb  he  is  to  occupy, 
in 

A  biirying-yard  of  sinners  dead,  unblest, 

the  poet  flees  terror-smitten  out  of  that  house 
into  the  tempestuous  night. 

Nor  looked  I  back,  till  to  a  far  oflF  wood 

Trembling  with  fear,  my  weary  feet  had  sped — 

Dark  was  the  night,  but  at  the  enchanted  dome 
I  saw  the  infernal  windows  flaming  red. 

At  last  the  hour  of  dissolution  arrives: 

Dim  burnt  the  lamp,  and  now  the  phantom  Death 
Gave  his  last  groans  in  horror  and  despair — 

**  All  hell  demands  me  hence  " — he  cried,  and  threw 
The  red  lamp  hissing  through  the  midnight  air. 

Trembling,  across  the  plain  my  course  I  held. 
And  found  the  grave-yard,  loitering  through  the 
gloom, 

And,  in  the  midst,  a  hell-red  wandering  light, 
Walking  in  fiery  circles  round  the  tomb. 

Whereupon  with  a  gruesome  picture  of  Death's 
interment  and  a  few  stanzas  of  proper  exhortation 
from  the  author,  this  remarkable  poem  comes  to 
an  end. 

Between  the  period  of  the  Revolution  and  the 
period  that  may  be  called  the  New  England  ren- 
aissance not  much  was  written  which  has  the  dis- 
tinct mark  of  the  American  temperament.  Yet  it 
is  a  significant  fact  that  Charles  Brockden  Brown's 


68  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

Wieland,  published  in  1798,  the  first  novel  of  the 
first  American  novelist,  should  be  built  upon  a 
theme  as  weird  and  as  steeped  in  "  thrilling  mel- 
ancholy," to  use  Brown's  own  words,  as  anything 
in  the  later  work  of  Hawthorne  or  Poe;  and  in 
the  proper  place  it  would  not  be  uninteresting  to 
show  how  far,  in  his  imperfect  way,  Brown  antici- 
pates the  very  methods  and  tricks  of  his  greater 
followers.  His  immediate  inspiration  comes  no 
doubt  from  the  mystery-mongering  novels  then  so 
popular  in  Kngland,  but  despite  the  crudeness  of 
a  provincial  style  there  does  run  through  the 
strange  unreality  of  Brown's  pages  a  note  of  sin- 
cerity, the  tongue  and  accents  of  a  man  to  whom 
such  themes  are  a  native  inheritance,  lending  to 
his  work  a  sustained  interest  which  I  for  my  part 
fail  to  find  in  the  Castle  of  Otranto  or  the  Mysteries 
of  Udolpho.  Nor  is  it  without  significance  that 
even  in  New  York,  where  if  anywhere  this  world 
claims  her  own,  Irving  in  his  genial  way  could 
fall  so  easily  into  brooding  on  the  dead  who  sleep 
in  Westminster  Abbey  or  relate  with  such  gusto 
the  wild  legends  of  the  Hudson.  Bryant,  too,  has 
kept  his  fame  chiefly  on  account  of  his  youthful 
musings  on  death  and  the  grandiose  pomp  of  those 
lines  that  tell  how  the  rock-ribbed  hills,  the  pen- 
sive vales,  the  venerable  rivers,  brooks, 

and,  poured  around  them  all, 
Old  Ocean's  grey  and  melancholy  waste,— 
Are  but  the  solemn  decorations  all 
Of  the  great  tomb  of  man. 


HAWTHORNE   AND   POE  69 

Necessarily  this  age-long  contemplation  of 
things  unearthly,  this  divorcing  of  the  imagina- 
tion from  the  fair  and  blithe  harmonies  of  life  to 
fasten  upon  the  sombre  effects  of  guilt  and  repro- 
bation, this  constant  meditation  on  death  and 
decay — necessaril}-  all  these  exerted  a  powerful 
influence  on  literature  when  the  renaissance  ap- 
peared in  New  England  and  as  a  sort  of  reflection 
in  the  rest  of  the  country.  So,  I  think,  it  hap- 
pened that  out  of  that  famous  group  of  men  who 
really  created  American  literature  the  only  two  to 
attain  perfection  of  form  in  the  higher  field  of  the 
imagination  were  writers  whose  minds  were  ab- 
sorbed by  the  weirder  phenomena  of  life.  But  it 
must  not  be  inferred  thence  that  the  spirit  of 
Hawthorne  and  Poe  was  identical  with  that  of 
Michael  Wigglesworth  and  Jonathan  Edwards. 
With  the  passage  of  time  the  unquestioning,  un- 
flinching faith  and  vision  of  those  heroic  men  dis- 
solved away.  Already  in  Freneau,  himself  born 
of  a  Huguenot  family,  a  change  is  noticeable; 
that  which  to  the  earlier  Fathers  was  a  matter  of 
infinite  concern,  that  which  to  them  was  more 
real  and  urgent  than  the  breath  of  life,  becomes 
now  chiefly  an  intoxicant  of  the  imagination,  and 
in  another  generation  the  transition  is  complete. 

It  is  this  precisely  that  we  understand  by  the  term 
"weird" — not  the  veritable  vision  of  unearthly 
things,  but  the  peculiar  half  vision  inherited  by 
the  soul  when  faith  has  waned  and  the  imagina- 
tion prolongs  the  old  sensations  in  a  shadow)/ 


70  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

involuntary  life  of  its  own;  and  herein  too  lies  the 
field  of  true  and  effective  symbolism.  If  Haw- 
thorne and  Poe,  as  we  think,  possess  an  element 
of  force  and  realism  such  as  Tieck  and  the  Ger- 
man school  utterly  lack,  it  is  because  they  write 
from  the  depths  of  this  profound  moral  experience 
of  their  people. 


THE  INFLUENCE   OF  EMERSON 

It  is  a  quality  of  the  human  spirit  on  which 
Emerson  himself  was  wont  to  dwell,  that  it  forever 
seeks  and  knows  no  rest  save  in  death.  Almost 
it  should  seem  that  one  cannot  acquaint  himself 
with  the  history  of  great  religions  and  philosophies 
without  falling  at  last  into  a  state  of  wondering 
indiflference  or  despair,  so  many  times  has  the 
truth  appeared  to  men  and  been  formulated  for 
the  uplifting  of  a  generation,  only  to  give  way  in 
turn  to  another  glimpse  of  the  same  haunting 
reality.  We  comfort  ourselves  with  the  words 
of  the  poet  whom  Emerson  loved  to  quote, —  a 
modern  version  of  Pandora: 

So  strength  first  made  a  way: 
Then  beautie  flow'd,  then  wisdome,  honour,  pleasure: 
When  almost  all  was  out,  God  made  a  stay, 
Perceiving  that  alone  of  all  his  treasure 

Rest  in  the  bottome  lay.     .     .    . 

For  if  I  should  (said  he) 
Bestow  this  Jewell  also  on  my  creature, 
He  would  adore  my  gifts  instead  of  me. 
And  rest  in  Nature,  not  the  God  of  Nature. 

So  both  should  losers  be. 

71 


72  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

When,  therefore,  we  consider  how  the  wisdom 
of  prophets  and  philosophers  in  the  past  has  so 
swiftly  solidified  into  a  formalism  that  holds  the 
weaker  in  bondage  like  a  strait  jacket,  and  when 
we  remember  how  our  sage  of  Concord  pointed 
out  that  Christianity  too  must  needs  fall  into  "the 
error  that  corrupts  all  attempts  to  communicate 
religion,"  when  we  reflect  on  the  inevitable  course 
of  human  thought,  those  of  us  who  are  lovers  of 
Emerson — as  I  myself  am  a  lover — need  feel  no 
grievance  to  be  told  that  Emersonianism  to-day  is 
a  sign  of  limitation,  not  of  strength;  of  palsy,  not 
of  growth.  I  say  Emersonianism,  meaning  the 
influence  of  Emerson  as  it  works  on  large  masses 
of  men;  but  I  would  not  imply  that  the  individual 
reader  of  Emerson  may  not  go  to  him  for  ever  re- 
newed inspiration  and  assurance  in  the  things  of 
the  spirit.  It  is  always  so.  The  teaching  of 
Plato  was  as  true  in  the  days  of  the  later  Acad- 
emy, is  as  true  now,  as  it  was  when  Socrates 
disputed  with  his  disciple  in  the  market-place  of 
Athens;  yet  almost  in  the  space  of  a  generation 
Platonism  became  a  snare  to  those  who  rest  in 
words  and  possess  no  corresponding  inner  vision 
of  their  own.  So  Emerson  cannot  escape  his  own 
condemnation  of  the  wise:  ' '  Though  in  our  lonely 
hours  we  draw  a  new  strength  out  of  their  mem- 
ory, yet,  pressed  on  our  attention,  as  they  are  by 
the  thoughtless  and  customary,  they  fatigue  and 
invade." 

Only  there  is  a  difference  to  observe.     The  evil 


EMERSON  73 

which  has  sprung  from  other  systems  of  thought 
has  been  due  chiefly  to  the  very  fact  that  they 
were  systems  and  thus  attempted  to  lay  restrain- 
ing hands  on  the  ever  fluent  human  spirit.  Out 
of  the  pursuit  of  truth  has  grown  a  metaphysic; 
out  of  religious  faith  has  developed  a  theology. 
But  with  Emerson  the  opposite  is  true;  the  mis- 
chief that  now  works  in  his  name  is  owing  in 
large  part  to  his  ver>'  lack  of  system.  Yet  it  is 
but  a  shallow  reader  who  would  go  a  step  further 
and  accept  Emerson's  quizzical  profession  of  in- 
consistency without  reserve.  "  I  would  write  on 
the  lintels  of  the  door-post,  JV/iim,"  he  said,  but 
added  immediately,  "I  hope  it  is  somewhat  better 
than  whim  at  last."  His  essays  ripple  and  recoil 
on  the  surface,  but  underneath  there  is  a  current 
setting  steadil}'  to  one  point.  Indeed  I  have  never 
been  able  to  understand  the  minds  of  those  who, 
like  Richard  Garnett,  declare  that  the  separate 
sentences  in  Emerson  are  clear,  but  that  his  essays 
as  a  whole  are  dark  because  composed  without 
any  central  constructive  thought  and,  in  fact, 
filled  with  contradictions.  It  should  seem  that 
critics  who  find  Emerson  self-contradictory  are 
just  those  who  should  never  have  meddled  with 
him,  for  the  reason  that  the  guiding  and  formative 
principle  in  all  his  work  is  meaningless  to  them. 
Though  often  capricious  in  expression  and  on  the 
surface  illogical,  Emerson,  more  than  almost  any 
other  writer  of  wide  influence,  displays  that  iimer 
logic  which  springs  from  the  constant  insistence 


74  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

on  one  or  two  master  ideas.  The  apparent  con- 
tradictions in  his  pages  need  but  a  moment's  re- 
flection and  a  modicum  of  understanding  to  reduce 
them  to  essential  harmony.  I,ike  all  teachers  of 
spiritual  insight  he  was  profoundly  impressed  by 
the  ubiquitous  dualism  of  life,  ''  Philosophically 
considered,"  he  wrote  in  his  first  famous  mani- 
festo, "  the  universe  is  composed  of  Nature  and 
the  Soul."  I  will  not  stay  to  show  how  this 
commonplace  of  thought  becomes  fruitful  of 
varied  wisdom  through  the  sincerity  and  depth 
of  Emerson's  vision.  I  think,  in  fact,  that  any- 
one who  understands  with  his  heart  as  well  as 
with  his  head  the  central  ideas  of  the  essay  on  the 
Oversoul  and  of  that  on  Kxperience  will  need  no 
such  guidance;  he  possesses  a  cue  that  will  carry 
him  like  Ariadne's  thread  through  all  the  laby- 
rinth of  Emerson's  philosophy.  Thus  of  the 
Oversoul  it  is  written: 

Meantime  within  man  is  the  soul  of  the  whole;  the 
wise  silence;  the  universal  beauty,  to  which  every  part 
and  particle  is  related;  .  .  .  this  deep  power  in  which 
we  exist,  and  whose  beatitude  is  all  accessible  to  us,  self- 
suflBcing  and  perfect  in  every  hour; 

and  of  the  Experience  of  nature  it  is  written: 

Dream  delivers  us  to  dream,  and  there  is  no  end  to 
illusion.  Life  is  a  train  of  moods  like  a  string  of  beads, 
and,  as  we  pass  through  them,  they  prove  to  be  many- 
coloured  lenses  which  paint  the  world  their  own  hue, 
and  each  shows  only  what  lies  in  its  own  focus. 


EMERSON  75 

It  is  characteristic  of  Emerson's  fine  integrity 
that  he  never  sought — as  all  systematic  philoso- 
phies and  religious  hitherto  had  attempted  —  to 
bridge  over  the  gap  between  these  tvv^o  realms  by 
a  scheme  of  ratiocination  or  revelation.  He  was 
conteut  to  let  them  lie  side  by  side  unreconciled, 
and  hence  his  seeming  fluctuations  to  those  of 
shallow  understanding.  In  conduct,  however,  he 
knew  well  how  to  draw  the  desired  lesson  from 
this  dilemma.  Indeed,  I  am  not  sure  that  all  the 
manifold  applications  of  his  genius  may  not  be 
found  summed  up  in  this  single  paragraph  from 
his  later  essay  on  Fate  : 

One  key,  one  solution  to  the  mysteries  of  human  con- 
dition, one  solution  to  the  old  knots  of  fate,  freedom  and 
foreknowledge,  exists,  the  propounding,  namely,  of  the 
double  consciousness.  A  man  must  ride  alternately  on 
the  horses  of  his  private  and  public  nature,  as  the  eques- 
trians in  the  circus  throw  themselves  nimbly  from  horse 
to  horse,  or  plant  one  foot  on  the  back  of  one,  and  the 
other  foot  on  the  back  of  the  other.  So  when  a  man  is 
the  victim  of  his  fate,  has  sciatica  in  his  loins,  and  cramp 
in  his  mind;  a  club-foot,  and  a  club  in  his  wit;  a  sour 
face,  and  a  selfish  temper;  a  strut  in  his  gait,  and  a  con- 
ceit in  his  affection;  or  is  ground  to  powder  by  the  vice 
of  his  race;  he  is  to  rally  on  his  relation  to  the  Universe, 
which  his  ruin  benefits.  Leaving  the  demon  who  suflFers, 
he  is  to  take  sides  with  the  Deity  who  secures  universal 
benefit  by  his  pain. 

But  because  Emerson's  thought  revolves  so 
harmoniously  about  these  two  central  principles, 
it  does  not  therefore  follow  that  he  has  a  philoso- 


^6  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

phical  sj'stem.  Not  ouly  does  he  make  no  at- 
tempt to  connect  them  logically,  but  he  is  satisfied 
to  apply  now  one  and  now  the  other  of  them  to 
the  solution  of  a  thousand  minor  questions  with- 
out much  order  or  method.  Hence  it  is  that 
readers  who  carry  to  his  essays  a  sense  for  ratioci- 
nation but  no  ultimate  vision  of  truth  find  him 
both  contradictory  and  obscure.  And  as  he  neg- 
lected to  mould  his  own  thought  into  a  system, 
so  he  requires  of  those  who  come  to  him  no  sys- 
tematic preparation.  The  truth  that  Emerson 
proclaimed  is  the  old,  old  commonplace  that  has 
arisen  before  the  minds  of  sages  and  prophets 
from  the  beginning  of  time;  but  they  have  each 
and  all  conditioned  this  truth  on  some  discipline  of 
the  reason  or  the  emotions.  They  have  invari- 
ably demanded  some  propaedeutic,  some  adherence 
to  a  peculiar  belief  or  submission  to  a  divine  per- 
sonality, before  the  disciple  should  be  carried  into 
the  inner  circle  of  ennobled  experiences.  With 
Plato  it  was  dialectics;  with  Buddha  it  was  the 
four-fold  truth  and  the  eight-fold  path  and  a  com- 
prehension of  the  twelve-fold  wheel  of  causation; 
with  Jesus  it  was  Follow  me.  And  in  this  system 
or  discipline  we  seem  to  discern  an  authentication 
of  their  high  claims.  Bound  up  as  we  are  with 
so  many  petty  concerns,  so  many  demands  of  the 
body,  blinded  by  sloth  and  made  callous  by  the 
conflict  of  so  many  material  powers, — it  is  hard  for 
us  to  accept  with  more  than  lip  assent  this  call  to 
the  life  of  the  spirit.     These  words  that  the  phil- 


EMERSON  'jy 

osophers  and  prophets  utter  so  glibly — are  they 
not  mere  words  after  all,  we  ask  ?  Do  they  signify 
any  reality  of  life  that  a  man  should  barter  houses 
and  land  for  them  ?  We  need  assurance  that  these 
ecstasies  and  these  long  contents  of  the  spiritual 
man  are  not  idle  boasts,  and  so  this  discipline  of 
faith  we  accept  readily  as  a  necessary  part  of  the 
scheme  of  salvation.  We  have  not  ourselves  par- 
taken of  such  blessings,  yet  we  can  imagine  that 
by  some  extraordinary  means,  some  nimble  gym- 
nastics of  the  brain,  we  might  be  raised  to  these 
incredible  heights.  But  now  comes  this  Yankee 
prophet,  offering  the  same  spiritual  exaltations 
freely  and  without  condition  to  all.  If  we  may 
believe  him,  a  man  shall  walk  out  under  the  open 
sky  and  breathe  the  sweet  influences  of  the  spirit 
as  cheaply  as  he  inhales  the  untainted  breeze. 
The  preacher  stands  at  the  meeting  of  the  ways 
and  cries  to  all  that  pass  by:  Ho,  ye  who  are 
wrapt  in  the  swaddling  clothes  of  reverence  and 
obedience,  cast  aside  these  trammels  and  walk  up- 
right in  your  own  strength.  What  have  we  to  do 
with  the  sacreduess  of  tradition  ?  No  law  can  be 
sacred  to  us  but  that  of  our  own  nature.  Nay,  fol- 
low the  whim  of  the  hour;  consistency  is  the  hob- 
goblin of  little  minds.  Give  me  health  and  a  day 
and  I  will  make  the  pomp  of  emperors  ridiculous. 

I  am  the  owner  of  the  sphere, 

Of  the  seven  stars  and  the  solar  year, 

Of  Caesar's  hand,  and  Plato's  brain. 

Of  Lord  Christ's  heart,  and  Shakespeare's  strain. 


78  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

And  the  wonder  ot  it  is  that  no  man  whose 
hearing  is  not  utterly  drowned  by  the  clamour  of 
the  world  can  read  a  page  of  these  essays  without 
recognising  that  Emerson  speaks  with  an  abso- 
lute and  undeceived  sincerity.  We  remember  his 
confession,  that  "when  a  man  lives  with  God, 
his  voice  shall  be  as  sweet  as  the  murmur  of  the 
brook  and  the  rustle  of  the  corn,"  and  it  is  with 
him  as 

When  the  harmony  of  heaven 
Soundeth  the  measures  of  a  lively  faith. 

Upon  the  reader,  despite  himself  it  may  be,  there 
steals  something  of  the  pure  and  noble  enthusiasm 
of  the  seer,  and  he  knows  straightway  that  the 
things  of  the  inner  life  are  real. 

If  this  were  all  it  would  be  well.  If  his  mes- 
sage stood  only  as  a  perpetual  instigation  to  the 
strong  and  a  noble  promise  to  inspired  youth,  we 
should  have  much  to  say  of  Emerson  and  little  of 
Emersonianism.  And,  in  fact,  it  would  be  indis- 
criminating  to  lay  at  Emerson's  door  the  whole 
evil  of  a  faded  and  vulgarised  transcendentalism. 
He  was  but  one  of  many;  others— some,  as  Chan- 
ning,  even  before  his  day — had  taught  the  same 
facility  of  the  spiritual  life.  Yet  in  him  the  move- 
ment came  to  its  beautiful  flower;  we  are  justified 
in  holding  him  mainly  responsible  for  the  harm 
that  flowed  from  it,  as  we  honour  him  for  the  glory 
that  lay  therein.  And,  alas,  even  in  his  own  day, 
the  doubtful  influence  of  this  fatally  easy  philo- 


EMERSON  79 

sophy  began  to  make  itself  felt.  Hawthorne,  the 
most  stalwart  observer  of  all  that  group,  tells  us 
how  many  bats  and  owls,  which  were  sometimes 
mistaken  for  fowls  of  angelic  feather,  were  at- 
tracted by  that  beacon  light  of  the  spirit.  It  was 
moreover  impossible,  he  avows,  to  dwell  in  Km- 
erson's  vicinity  without  inhaling  more  or  less  the 
mountain  atmosphere  of  his  lofty  thought;  but  in 
the  brains  of  some  people  it  wrought  a  singular 
giddiness.  And  if  Emersonianism  was  mischiev- 
ous to  weak  minds  then,  what  shall  we  say  of  its 
influence  in  New  England  to-day — nay,  through- 
out the  whole  country  ?  For  it  is  rampant  in  our 
life;  it  has  wrought  in  our  religion,  our  politics, 
and  our  literature  a  perilous  dizziness  of  the 
brain. 

There  is  a  mysterious  faith  abroad  in  the  land, 
which,  however  we  grudge  to  say  it,  is  the  most 
serious  manifestation  of  religion  discoverable  in 
these  days.  We  call  it  Christian  Science,  or  faith 
healing,  or  what  not — the  gospel  of  a  certain  Mrs. 
Baker-Eddy;  but  in  reality  it  does  not  owe  its 
strength  to  the  teaching  of  an  ignorant  woman  in 
New  Hampshire.  It  is  a  diluted  and  stale  pro- 
duct of  Emersonianism,  and  the  parentage,  I 
think,  is  not  difficult  to  discern.  To  Emerson,  as 
to  Mrs.  Baker-Eddy,  sin  and  suffering  had  no  real 
existence;  a  man  need  only  open  his  breast  to  the 
random  influences  of  heaven  to  lead  the  purely 
spiritual  life.  Nor  is  it  correct  to  say,  as  some 
fondly  suppose,  that  Christian  Science  or  Emer- 


80  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

sonianism  has  any  vital  connectiou  with  Oriental 
mysticism.  True,  both  Emerson  and  the  sages 
of  the  East  taught  that  spirit  was  the  onl}'  reality 
and  that  the  world  of  the  body  and  of  evil  was  a  de- 
ception. "  Life  itself  is  a  bubble  and  a  scepticism 
and  a  sleep  within  a  sleep,"  said  Emerson,  and 
the  Hindu  summed  up  the  same  thought  in  his 
name  for  the  creator,  Mdya,  illusion.  But  there 
is  a  radical  difference  in  their  attitude  to  this 
truth.  Though  the  material  world  was  in  one 
sense  illusion  and  unreality  to  the  Hindu,  yet  in 
another  sense  it  was  tremendously  real.  Over  the 
misery  and  insuflScience  of  mortal  existence  he 
brooded  in  a  way  that  to  us  is  inconceivable;  we 
call  him  a  pessimist,  and  from  our  ordinary  point 
of  view  rightly.  He  was  haunted  as  with  an  in- 
finite sadness  by  the  vision  of  endlessly  recurring 
birth  and  death,  of  ceaseless  unmeaning  mutation. 
To  escape  this  life  of  unspeakable  sorrow  he  la- 
boured at  vast  systems  of  philosophy,  he  was 
ready  to  undergo,  if  needs  were,  a  lifetime  of 
crushing  asceticism.  He  could  no  more  have 
understood  the  jaunty  optimism  of  Emerson  than 
we  can  understand  what  we  style  his  pessimism. 
There  is  a  story — how  authentic  I  do  not  know — 
that  when  Emerson  was  visiting  Carlyle,  the  gruff 
Scotchman,  who  certainly  believed  heartily  in  evil 
and  damnation,  carried  his  guest  to  the  slums  of 
London  and  pointed  out  to  him  one  horrible  sight 
after  another.  "  And  do  you  believe  in  the  deil, 
noo  ?  "  he  would  say;  and  always  Emerson  would 


EMERSON  8 1 

shake  his  head  iu  gentle  denial.  The  story  is  at 
least  ben  trovato;  it  sets  forth  clearly  the  facile 
optimism  out  of  which  Christian  Science  was  to 
spring.  Such  a  creed,  when  professed  by  one 
who  spoke  with  the  noble  accent  and  from  the 
deep  insight  of  an  Emerson,  was  a  radiant  posses- 
sion for  seeking  humanity  forever;  it  is  folly  and 
inner  deception  when  repeated  parrot-like  by  men 
and  women  with  no  mental  training  and,  visibly 
to  all  the  world,  with  no  warrant  of  spiritual 
experience.  To  suppose  that  you  and  I  and  our 
neighbour  can  at  our  sweet  will  cast  off  the  im- 
pediments of  sin  and  suffering  is  a  monstrous 
self-deceit.  So  has  the  very  lack  of  system  in 
Emerson's  message  become  a  snare  to  mankind 
more  deadly  than  the  hardening  systems  of  other 
philosophies.     These  are  at  least  virile. 

It  is  at  best  an  ungrateful  ofl&ce  to  lay  bare  the 
harmful  influence  of  a  beloved  teacher,  and  I 
would  hurry  over  what  little  remains  to  be  said. 
In  politics  the  unreflecting  optimism  of  transcen- 
dental Boston  has  given  birth  to  that  unformed 
creature  called  Anti-imperialism.  I  do  not  mean 
such  anti-imperialism  as  would  dispute  on  the 
grounds  of  expediency  our  policy  in  the  Philip- 
pines or  elsewhere — this  is  a  question  of  states- 
manship—  but  that  "Saturnalia  or  excess  of 
Faith"  which  wantonly  closes  the  eyes  to  dis- 
tinctions and  would  see  a  Washington  in  every 
Aguinaldo.  It  is  a  blinking  of  the  eyes  to  those 
' '  unconcerning  things,  matters  of  fact, ' '  in  political 

6 


82  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

fitness  as  Christian  Science  was  in  moral  fit- 
ness; it  is  the  glorification  of  untried  human 
nature  preached  by  Channing,  made  beautiful  by 
Emerson,  acted  by  the  Abolitionists,  and  reduced 
to  the  absurd  by  Mr.  Atkinson.  And  the  same 
optimism  has  made  itself  felt  in  recent  New  Eng- 
land literature.  "  The  vision  of  genius  comes  by 
renouncing  the  too  ofiicious  activity  of  the  under- 
standing and  giving  leave  and  amplest  privilege 
to  the  spontaneous  sentiment,"  wrote  Emerson; 
and  again,  "  The  poet  must  be  a  rhapsodist,  his 
inspiration  a  sort  of  casualty;"  and  yet  again, 
"  The  Supreme  Mind  finds  itself  related  to  all  its 
works  and  will  travel  a  royal  road  to  particular 
knowledges  and  powers;" — excellent  doctrine  for 
a  Shakespeare  or  an  Emerson,  a  noble  source  of 
inspiration  for  all,  indeed;  but  conceive  the  havoc 
it  might  work,  has  indeed  actually  wrought,  when 
accepted  literally  by  writers  of  a  single  talent.  I 
was  impressed  recently  by  a  criticism  in  the  lyOn- 
dou  Times  which  held  up  to  ridicule  the  cheap 
enthusiasms,  the  utter  want  of  discrimination  be- 
tween inspiration  and  twaddle,  the  flaccid  sublimi- 
ties, of  a  certain  book  by  lyilian  Whiting,  which 
deals  with  the  literary  memories  of  those  old  Bos- 
ton Days.  It  set  me  to  reflecting  on  the  widespread 
mischief  done  to  New  England  writing  of  to-day 
by  this  self-abandonment  to  ecstasy  and  this  easy 
acceptance  of  genius  wherever  it  proclaims  itself 
— in  New  England  at  least.  Pessimism  is  morbid 
and  stationary,  but  I  sometimes  think  that  the 


EMERSON  83 

black  hopelessness  of  a  I,eopardi  would  be  better 
than  this  self-deceit  of  a  facile  optimism. 

But  enough.  I  feel  already  something  of  that 
shame  which  must  have  fallen  upon  the  advocatus 
diaboli  constrained  by  his  ofl5ce  to  utter  a  protest 
against  the  saints.  Yet  I  trust  my  words  will  not 
be  taken  as  directed  against  the  sweet  spirit  of 
Emerson,  whom  I  reverence  this  side  idolatry;  I 
have  merely  written  on  the  ancient  text,  Corruptio 
optimi  pessima . 

P.S.— This  essay  was  published  in  the  Independent  in 
connection  with  the  centenary  of  Emerson's  birth,  May 
25,  1903,  and  immediately  drew  from  Mrs.  Eddy  a  pro- 
mulgation setting  forth  to  all  the  world  the  extent  of 
her  education  and  denouncing  the  idea  that  Christian 
Science  owes  anything  to  Emerson,  or  to  Greek  or  Ro- 
man. She  and  God  alone,  it  appears,  are  to  be  accredited 
with  this  new  faith.  In  view  of  the  fact  that  Mrs.  Eddy 
now  numbers  her  disciples  by  the  million — many  of  them 
educated  and  thoughtful  people— we  regard  this  promul- 
gation as  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  documents  in 
the  history  of  religion. 

"I  was  earl}',"  she  says,  "the  pupil  of  Miss  Sarah  J. 
Bodwell,  the  principal  of  Sanbornton  Academy  of  New 
Hampshire,  and  finished  my  course  of  studies  under 
Prof.  Dyer  H.  Sanborn,  author  of  Sanborn's  Grammar. 
Among  my  early  studies  were  Comstock's  Natural  Phi- 
losophy, chemistry,  Blair's  Rhetoric,  Whateley's  Logic, 
Watts's  On  the  Mind  and  Moral  Science.  At  sixteen 
years  of  age  I  began  writing  for  leading  newspapers,  and 
for  many  years  wrote  for  the  best  magazines  in  the  South 
and  North.  I  have  lectured  in  large  and  crowded  halls 
in  New  York  City,  Chicago,   Boston,   Portland,  and  at 


84  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

Waterville  College,  and  have  been  invited  to  lecture  in 
London  and  Edinburgh.  In  1883  I  started  the  Christian 
Science  journal,  and  for  several  years  was  the  proprietor 
and  sole  editor  of  that  journal.  In  1893  Judge  S.  J. 
Hanna  became  editor  of  the  Christian  Science  Journal, 
and  for  ten  subsequent  years  he  knew  my  ability  as  an 
editor.  In  his  recent  lecture  at  Chicago,  he  said:  'Mrs. 
Eddy  is,  from  every  point  of  view,  a  woman  of  sound 
education  and  liberal  culture  '      ,     .     . 

"I  am  the  author  of  the  Christian  Science  text  book, 
Science  and  Health  with  Key  to  the  Scriptures,  and  the 
demand  for  this  book  increases,  and  the  book  is  already 
in  its  two  hundred  and  seventy-fourth  edition  of  one 
thousand  copies  each,  I  am  rated  in  the  National 
Magazine  (  1903)  as  '  standing  the  eighth  in  a  list  of 
twenty-two  of  the  foremost  living  authors.'  " — But  withal 
she  is  modest.  "I  claim,"  she  concludes,  "no  special 
merit  of  any  kind.  All  that  I  am  in  reality  God  has 
made  me." 

Fatuity  has  not  often  gone  beyond  this.  Tantutn 
religio potuit  suadere  ineptiarum. 


THE   SPIRIT   OF   CARI.YLE 

At  last,  with  the  publication  of  the  New  Letters 
of  Thomas  Carlyle,^  we  have  a  complete  survey  of 
his  correspondence  from  the  early  schoolmaster 
days  when  he  was  teaching  mathematics  "  with 
some  potential  outlook  on  Divinity  as  ultimatum," 
to  the  last  waiting  years  at  Chelsea  of  the  acknow- 
ledged prophet  to  whom  the  final  mercy  of  God 
seemed  that  "  He  delivers  us  from  a  life  which 
has  become  a  task  too  hard. ' '  The  earlier  volumes 
of  the  series  were  edited  by  Professor  Norton,  the 
last  two  by  Carlyle's  nephew,  both  editors  being 
avowedly  hostile  to  Carlyle's  biographer,  the  care- 
less, the  much  maligned,  James  Anthony  Froude. 
As  for  the  long  quarrel  that  has  been  waged  be- 
tween the  heirs  of  Froude  and  Carlyle,  let  us  hope 
that  this  disgraceful  chapter  in  our  literary  history 
has  been  closed,  and  forever.  The  most  unfor- 
tunate episode  of  this  Battle  of  the  Books  was  the 
recent  publication  by  his  heirs  of  a  pamphlet  which 
had  been  written  by  Froude  under  the  influence 
of  that  morbid  meddler,  Miss  Geraldine  Jewsbury, 

'  New  Letters  of  Thomas  Carlyle.  Edited  and  anno- 
tated by  Alexander  Carlyle.  2  vols.  New  York:  John 
Lane,  1904. 

85 


86  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

and  which  contained  charges  against  Carlyle  of  an 
astounding  and  revolting  nature.  In  itself  the 
pamphlet  was  harmless.  No  one  whose  psycho- 
logical perception  was  not  for  the  moment  de- 
ranged could  read  the  early  letters  of  Carlyle  to 
his  wife,  or  indeed  follow  any  part  of  his  career, 
without  being  utterly  convinced  of  his  virility. 
But  in  another  sense  the  pamphlet  might  have 
done  a  great  wrong;  its  silliness  and  falsehood 
were  of  a  kind  to  discredit  all  that  Fronde  had 
written  about  his  master,  and  so  to  destroy  our 
confidence  in  one  of  the  two  great  biographies  of 
the  language.  We  might  have  been  forced  to  be- 
lieve that  the  Life  of  Carlyle  was  written  by  a 
knave  as  the  Johnson,  according  to  Macaulay, 
was  written  by  a  fool.  The  work  of  Fronde's  en- 
emies has  relieved  us  of  this  difficulty.  By  pub- 
lishing the  Letters  and  Reminiscences  in  authentic 
form  they  have  indeed  proved  that  Froude  made 
innumerable  errors  in  detail,  that  his  methods  as 
an  historian  were  extraordinary,  often  unaccount- 
able (which,  for  that  matter,  was  well  enough 
known  before),  that  in  some  respects  he  empha- 
sised unwarrantably  the  harsher  side  of  Carlyle' s 
character;  but  they  have  also  and  unwillingly 
shown  that  Froude,  despite  his  blunders,  despite 
the  scandal  of  the  recent  pamphlet,  did  succeed 
nevertheless  in  writing  a  biography  no  less  re- 
markable for  its  insight  into  character  than  for  its 
artistic  form.  After  reading  the  ten  volumes 
edited  by  Professor  Norton  and  Mr.  Alexander 


CARLYLE  87 

Carlyle  and  then  turning  again  to  Froude's  biog- 
raphy, one  may  well  be  impressed  by  the  masterly 
manner  in  which  that  great  writer  has  seized  on 
the  real  Carlyle,  which  lies  half  concealed  in  the 
letters,  and  set  him  forth  in  all  the  clear  relief  of 
supreme  craftsmanship.  The  rugged  sage  of 
Chelsea  looms  up  as  tremendous  in  English  lit- 
erature as  the  burly  dictator  of  the  earlier  century 
—and  it  is  withal  a  true  picture.  It  is  quite  prob- 
able that  the  bulk  of  Carlyle' s  work  will  be  little 
read  in  the  future,  as  has  happened  with  Johnson; 
his  unflagging  vehemence,  his  determination  to 
seize  always  on  the  emotional  content  of  each  fact, 
do  certainly  render  his  histories  monotonous. 
But  in  the  record  of  his  hfe  he  will  continue,  like 
Johnson,  to  amuse,  to  instruct,  and  to  dominate. 
There  lives  his  personality  which  the  world  can- 
not afibrd  to  neglect;  there,  too,  speaks  the  elo- 
quent message  of  the  man.  I  have  thought  that 
it  would  not  be  amiss  to  point  out  the  two  peculiar 
traits  of  his  character  whose  conjunction,  it  has 
seemed  to  me,  accounts  for  the  domination  of  his 
spirit  over  the  finer  minds  of  the  age,  and  whose 
mutual  incompatibility  brought  about  the  pitiful 
tragedy  of  his  domestic  life. 

In  part  the  fascination  of  Carlyle' s  character 
and  writings  springs  from  a  quality  rarely  found 
among  Anglo-Saxous,  from  that  sense  of  illusion 
which  we  call  Oriental  and  which  is  really  the 
basis  of  Hindu  rehgion.  It  is  a  sense  far  removed 
from  the  ordinary  bustling  practical  intelligence 


88  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

of  Britain  and  America,  a  form  of  mysticism,  as 
we  vaguely  call  it,  which  is  spurned  under  that 
all-comprehensive  word  un-English  or  un-Ameri- 
can, which  yet  here  and  there  crops  up  unaccount- 
ably in  our  greater  poets.     To  Shakespeare,  most 
of  all,  the  feeling  came  often  with  strange  effect  in 
the  midst  of  his  stormy  passions;  and  it  is  not  by 
chance  that  Carlyle's  favourite  quotation  was  that 
outcry  of  Macbeth  at  the  end  of  a  tumultuous 
career:  "To-morrow,  and  To-morrow,  and  To- 
morrow !  "     To  him,  as  to  Macbeth,  life  was  "but 
a   walking   shadow."      Sufl&cient  emphasis   has 
hardly  been   laid   upon    this  phase  of  Carlyle's 
mind.     Froude  must  have  recognised  it  in  a  way, 
for  the  selections  he  makes  use  of  from  the  letters 
and  journals  are  filled  with  the  sense  of  spectral 
vision,  yet  nowhere  does  he  point  out  definitely  the 
kinship  between  his  master  and  those  eremites 
of  ancient  India  who,  in  pursuit  of  that  great 
silence  which  Carlyle  preached  so   vociferously, 
withdrew  for  meditation  to  the  solitary  groves  and 
mountain   caves.     Not   Bhartrihari  himself,   the 
philosopher  king  of  Oujjein,  was  more  haunted 
by  the  bewildering  phantasmagoric  aspect  of  the 
world  than  this  peasant-born  son  of  Ecclefechan. 
Life  in  well-ordered  England  was  to  Carlyle  a 
struggle  with  "  the  whirlwind  and  wild  piping 
battle  of  fate."     Everywhere  it  was  the   same; 
whether  at  Craigenputtock  or  by  the  weltering 
sea  or  in  the  roaring  streets  of  London,  he  was 
awed  by  the  noisy  insignificance  of  the   world 


CARLYLE  89 

swimming  through  the  void  of  space,  by  the 
frantic  unrest  of  the  heart  of  man  looking  out 
upon  the  eternal  repose  of  the  hills,  by  the  clam- 
orous discord  of  human  life  beneath  the  great 
silences  of  the  sky;  everywhere  he  moved  among 
spectres  and  illusions.  Walking  at  night  over  the 
moors  about  his  Craigenputtock  home,  he  found 
it  "  silent,  solitary  as  Tadmor  in  the  wilderness; 
yet  the  infinite  vault  still  over  it,  and  the  earth  a 
little  ship  of  space  in  which  he  was  sailing." 
Later  in  hfe  he  visits  the  old  birthplace  at  Eccle- 
fechan,  and  there  on  the  road  sits  for  a  while 
alone,  looking  across  to  the  Cumberland  moun- 
tains and  calling  up  the  shadows  of  the  past. 
"  Tartarus  itself,"  he  said,  "  and  the  pale  king- 
doms of  Dis,  could  not  have  been  more  preter- 
natural to  me — most  stern,  gloomy,  sad,  grand 
yet  terrible,  yet  steeped  in  woe."  More  often 
amid  the  solemn  scenes  of  nature  the  illusion  of 
man's  discordant  fate  sank  away  beneath  the 
brooding  presence  of  the  infinite.  Very  beautiful 
in  feeling  is  the  passage  quoted  by  Froude  from  a 
letter  written  at  Linlathen:  "  Yesternight,  before 
sunset,  I  walked  solitary  to  Stockbridge  hilltop, 
the  loneliest  road  in  all  Britain,  where  you  go  and 
come  some  three  miles  without  meeting  a  human 
soul.  Strange,  earnest  light  lay  upon  the  moun- 
tain-tops all  round,  strange  clearness;  solitude  as 
if  personified  upon  the  near  bare  hills,  a  silence 
everywhere  as  if  premonitory  of  the  grand  eternal 
one. ' '    Was  he  thinking  of  Goethe's  ' '  Ueber  alien 


90  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

Gipfeln  ist  Ruh,"  when  he  wrote  ?  That  may  not 
be  known,  but  one  thing  is  certain:  It  is  because 
Froude  had  the  wisdom  to  build  up  his  biography 
on  such  excerpts  as  this  that  it  presents  a  true 
and  momentous  portrait  of  the  man;  and  con- 
versely it  is  because  Mr.  Alexander  Carlyle  omits 
this  letter  and  others  like  it  (they  were  written 
during  a  period  of  estrangement  between  Carlyle 
and  his  wife)  that  his  collection  is  of  secondary 
interest,  and  really  belittles  the  man  he  attempts 
to  magnify. 

But  it  was  in  London  Carlyle  felt  the  inscruta- 
ble mystery  of  life  weigh  upon  him  as  a  hideous 
nightmare.  There  the  world  looked  ' '  often  quite 
spectral"  to  him.  "  It  is  and  continues  a  wild 
wondrous  chaotic  den  of  discord,  this  London," 
ne  writes.  "  I  am  often  wae  and  awestruck  at 
once  to  wander  along  its  crowded  streets,  and  see 
and  hear  the  roaring  torrent  of  men  and  animals 
■and  carriages  and  wagons,  all  rushing  they  know 
not  whence,  they  know  not  whither!  "  It  is  not 
strange  that  he  often  felt  himself  ' '  the  loneliest  of 
all  the  sons  of  Adam,"  or  that  "  in  the  jargon  of 
poor  grimacing  men"  he  seemed  to  listen  "  to  the 
jabbering  of  spectres. ' '  One  day,  while  the  spirit 
of  the  French  Revolution  is  upon  him,  he  calls  at 
Mrs.  Austin's,  where  he  hears  "  Sydney  Smith 
for  the  first  time  guffawing,  other  persons  prating, 
jargoning."  He  writes  of  it  in  his  journal,  and 
adds :  ''To  me  through  these  thin  cobwebs  Death 
and  Eternity  sate  glaring. ' '     Often,  as  I  read  of 


CARLYLE  91 

Carlyle  and  reflect  how  life  to  him  was  a  perilous 
journey  through  phantoms  and  fiery  thronging 
illusions,  I  recall  passages  of  the  Hindu  books, 
and  one  epigram  in  particular  comes  to  my  mind: 

Seated  within  this  body's  car 
The  silent  Self  is  driven  afar; 
And  the  five  senses  at  the  pole 
Like  steeds  are  tugging,  restive  of  control. 

And  if  the  driver  lose  his  way, 
Or  the  reins  sunder,  who  can  say 
In  what  blind  paths,  what  pits  of  fear 
Will  plunge  the  chargers  in  their  mad  career? 

And  in  another  way  Carlyle  was  filled  with  the 
Oriental  spirit.  To  him,  as  to  the  philosophers 
of  India,  only  one  fact  was  certain  in  this  ever- 
shifting  mirage  of  our  worldly  life.  Running 
through  it  all  was  the  unvarying  moral  law  of 
cause  and  effect:  what  a  man  sowed  that  should 
he  inevitably  reap.  It  is  not  necessary  to  dwell 
on  this  point,  for  no  one  can  read  a  page  of  Car- 
lyle's  writings  without  learning  that  the  very 
warp  and  woof  of  his  doctrine  were  the  tremend- 
ous certainty  of  virtue  and  vice,  of  the  retributive 
law  of  justice.  Sometimes  he  expresses  this  sense 
of  the  indwelling  reality  in  the  old  terms  of  God 
and  Providence  which  he  had  inherited  in  his 
Scottish  home;  at  other  times  he  speaks  in  the 
more  mystical  manner  of  the  East,  as  if  an  im- 
personal law  of  morality  wrought  within  us  and 


92  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

created  our  destiny.  In  that  passage  quoted 
above,  in  which  he  describes  the  bewildering 
phantasmagoria  of  the  London  streets,  he  adds: 
"  Nevertheless,  there  2S  a  deep,  divine  meaning 
in  it,  and  God  is  in  the  midst  of  it,  had  we  but 
eyes  to  see,"  And  elsewhere  a  thousand  times 
in  his  letters  and  formal  works  he  expresses  the 
same  sentiment.  Here  alone  lay  the  lesson  and 
significance  of  history,  in  the  terrible  assurance 
of  retribution  following  hard  upon  transgression 
of  the  ten  commandments.  "All  history  is  a 
Bible,"  he  says,  and  adds  somewhat  plaintively 
that  he  has  preached  this  solemn  doctrine  through 
a  lifetime,  but  only  to  deaf  ears.  This  it  was  that 
made  the  French  Revolution,  to  his  mind,  the 
most  significant  event  in  human  affairs;  others 
saw  in  that  catastrophe  the  awakening  of  liberty; 
Carlyle  beheld  only  a  stern  Providence  dealing 
retribution  to  a  sinful  people.  ' '  I  should  not  have 
known  what  to  make  of  this  world  at  all,"  he 
ejaculates,  "if  it  had  not  been  for  the  French 
Revolution."  And  his  history  of  that  upheaval 
is  nothing  other  than  a  lyric  rhapsody  over  the 
illusion  of  life,  the  cant  and  mockery  of  words, 
pierced  through  and  through  by  the  wrath  of  the 
divine  reality.  The  men  and  women  of  his  pages 
are  spectres  hounded  by  the  loud  Furies.  The 
vision  of  the  whole  is  as  it  were  pictures  of  fire 
thrown  on  a  curtain  of  seething  cloud.  In  a  letter 
to  Thomas  Erskine  (which,  it  may  be  noted,  is 
not  included  in  the  collection  made  by  Mr,  Alex- 


CARLYLE  93 

ander  Carlyle)  he  sums  up  the  truth  which  he  felt 
it  his  mission  to  preach: 

The  great  soul  of  this  world  is  Just.  With  a  voice  soft 
as  the  harmony  of  the  spheres,  yet  stronger,  sterner,  than 
all  thunders,  this  message  does  now  and  then  reach  us 
through  the  hollow  jargon  of  things.  This  great  fact  we 
live  in,  and  were  made  by. 

Nor  was  his  attitude  toward  the  individual  in 
any  way  different  from  his  understanding  of  his- 
tory. For  himself  he  seemed  to  be  swathed  and 
"  embated  "  in  enchantments  from  which  no  man 
could  dehver  him  until  death  freed  him  once  for 
all.  "  One  thing  in  the  midst  of  this  chaos,"  he 
writes,  "I  can  more  and  more  determine  to  adhere 
to — it  is  now  almost  my  sole  rule  of  life — to  clear 
myself  of  cants  and  formulas  as  of  poisonous 
Nessus  shirts;  to  strip  them  off  me,  by  w^hat  name 
soever  called,  and  follow,  were  it  down  to  Hades, 
what  I  myself  know  and  see."  And  several  times 
he  recurs  to  this  conception  of  himself  as  a  weary 
Hercules,  .struggling  with  the  venomed  shirts  of 
illusion  that  wrapt  his  soul  about.  Here,  too,  lies 
the  explanation  of  his  much-reiterated  doctrine  of 
work.  He  first,  apparently  got  the  lesson  from 
Goethe,  to  whom  work  was  a  kind  of  glorified 
prudential  means  of  attaining  happiness  and  self- 
development,  but  soon  carried  it  into  a  region 
quite  beyond  the  great  German's  range  of  vision. 
In  the  midst  of  innumerable  mockeries  and  decep- 
tions he  perceived  one  absolute  certainty  —  that 


94  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

the  deeds  of  man  wove  influences  about  him  which 
were  the  creation  of  his  destiny.  This  was  the 
law  of  justice  that  remained  steadfast,  though  all 
the  religious  imaginings  of  Jew  and  Gentile  were 
swept  away,  and  Jove  and  Jehovah  faded  into 
oblivion.  Through  all  his  doubts  he  proclaimed 
this  mystic  gospel  of  Work  with  appalling  vocif- 
eration. One  is  reminded  again  of  the  creed  of 
those  philosophers  of  India  to  whom  Carlyle  in  so 
many  ways  bore  a  strangely  distorted  likeness. 
From  the  preacher  of  London  shouting  his  mes- 
sage through  the  din  of  our  Western  civilisation,  I 
turn  to  Bhartrihari  and  read  his  quaint  epigrams, 
written,  we  may  suppose,  after  he  had  retired  from 
the  throne  and  sought  the  silence  and  seclusion  of 
his  cavern  dwelling  beyond  the  houses  of  Oujjein: 

Before  the  Gods  we  bend  in  awe. 
But  lo,  they  bow  to  fate's  dread  law; 
Honour  to  Fate,  then  austere  lord  ! 
But  lo,  it  fashions  but  our  works'  reward. 

Nay,  if  past  works  our  present  state 
Engender,  what  of  gods  and  fate  ? 
Honour  to  Works  !  in  them  the  power 
Before  whose  awful  nod  even  fate  must  cower. 

No  wonder  that  with  such  a  burden  to  deliver 
Carlyle  found  himself  like  one  crying  in  the  wild- 
erness. Men  listened  and  were  startled  from  their 
lethargy;  they  honoured  him  with  the  name  of 
prophet,  and  gaped  upon  him  with  a  vague  dread, 
but  in  the  end  they  shook  their  heads  and  turned 


CARLYLE  95 

away  as  from  an  inspired  madman.  It  may  be 
that  the  message  of  Carlyle  was  the  old  truth  of 
the  sages  announced  in  a  new  and  astounding 
form;  certainly  it  was  in  every  way  diametrically 
opposed  to  the  current  of  belief  that  swept  through 
the  nineteenth  century.  Those  were  the-  days 
when  science  was  reaching  forth  to  usurp  the 
kingdom  of  thought.  Evolution  announced  that 
the  material  world  alone  was  governed  by  immut- 
able and  discoverable  laws,  and  that  morality  was 
based  on  the  ever-shifting  quicksands  of  custom 
and  tradition;  Carlyle  perceived  in  the  phenomena 
of  life  only  thin  cobwebs,  wherethrough  Death 
and  Eternity  sate  glaring,  whereas  the  moral  law 
alone  was  unchangeable,  founded  on  the  everlast- 
ing rock  of  truth.  As  a  people  we  have  entrusted 
our  destiny  to  Darwin  and  Spencer  and  Huxley, 
and  to  Carlyle  we  have  granted  the  dubious  praise 
of  having  written  Literahire  !  Nor  was  he  in  any 
closer  sympathy  with  the  religious  aims  of  the  day. 
That  was  the  time,  on  the  one  hand,  of  Puseyism 
and  the  Oxford  movement  which  undertook  to 
counteract  the  scepticism  of  science  by  an  appeal 
to  tradition  and  the  influence  of  imaginative  sym- 
bols, and,  on  the  other  hand,  of  the  strenuous  re- 
ligion of  Maurice  and  Kingsley,  who  sought  to 
smother  doubts  in  restless  activity.  Towards  both 
movements  Carlyle  was  perfectly  cold,  even  scorn- 
ful. These  good  men  seemed  to  him  to  be  delib- 
erately forging  self-deceptions  to  take  the  place  of 
the  old  faith,  and  his  answer  to  their  challenge 


<^  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

was  a  fierce  proclamation  of  "  the  Exodus  from 
Houndsditch."  In  politics  he  was,  if  possible, 
still  more  opposed  to  the  current  of  the  age.  De- 
mocracy was  then  gathering  up  her  strength  for 
the  long  and  apparently  victorious  struggle  with 
inherited  powers  and  principalities.  The  ballot 
box  was  to  be  the  guarantee  of  righteous  govern- 
ment, and  the  will  of  the  majority  was  in  all 
things  to  rule  supreme.  Carlyle  believed  that  the 
multitude  of  men  were  blinded  with  the  illusions 
of  this  world,  and  that  to  trust  to  their  judgment 
was  like  leaving  the  guidance  of  a  rudderless 
vessel  to  the  waves  of  the  sea.  He  would  stand 
neither  with  Radicals  nor  Tories.  To  the  former 
he  preached  the  instability  of  all  mobs;  to  the  lat- 
ter he  pointed  out  the  sufferings  of  the  poor,  and 
the  idle,  fox-hunting  habits  of  the  aristocracy. 
He  saw  salvation  for  the  people  only  where  a 
strong  man  ruled  by  right  of  the  divine  reality 
speaking  through  him.  When  asked  who  was  to 
determine  whether  the  strong  man  was  the  good 
man,  whether  might  was  right,  he  exclaimed  sav- 
agely that  hell-fire  would  be  the  judge,  as  it  had 
already  judged  in  the  French  Revolution. 

In  every  dispute  the  world,  after  its  ancient 
manner,  decided  against  him  in  its  own  favour. 
It  would  not  be  easy  to  name  a  single  great  ques- 
tion or  tendency  of  the  age  which  was  in  any  way 
guided  or  balked  by  his  vehement  prophesying. 
If  his  influence  was  deep  and  undeniable,  it  was 
due  to  that  curious  dualism  that  exists  in  most 


CARLYLE  97 

of  US  between  our  public  and  our  private  con- 
science. Men  listened  to  his  social  denunciations 
with  amazement  or  with  mockery;  there  was  no 
room  for  his  mysticism  in  the  spirit  of  compromise 
and  utilitarianism  that  governed,  and  no  doubt 
must  always  govern,  public  affairs.  But  in  pri- 
vate, when  the  individual  man  turned  from  the 
clamour  of  opinions  to  meditate  in  the  secret 
chamber  of  his  thought,  then  the  words  of  Carlyle 
penetrated  to  the  heart  with  the  authority  of  that 
voice,  still  and  small,  yet  stronger,  sterner  than 
all  thunders,  that  none  shall  hear  and  with  im- 
punity disobey.  To  those  who  are  absorbed  in 
the  philosophy  of  this  world  Carlyle's  doctrine  has 
had  no  meaning  and  probably  will  never  have  a 
meaning  ;  to  one  who  reflects  apart  and  seeks  a 
solitary  law  for  his  own  guidance,  Carlyle  will 
long  remain,  as  he  stands  revealed  in  Froude's 
pages,  a  revered  friend  and  a  dreaded  mentor. 

The  wonder  is  not  that  Carlyle's  political  and 
religious  theories  went  unheeded,  but  that  he 
himself  received  publicly  such  honour  in  the  land 
as  a  prophet.  That  is  a  paradox  which  sprang 
from  a  contradiction  in  his  own  nature.  He  com- 
pelled men  to  listen  to  him  by  that  strange  union 
of  qualities  which  was  at  once  his  strength  and 
his  weakness.  His  preaching  in  part  was  not  un- 
like the  philosophy  of  those  Indian  gymnosophists 
who  from  Alexander's  day  to  ours  have  been  a 
marvel  and  a  disturbing  doubt  to  the  Occident. 
But  to  the  Hindus'  belief  in  the  illusion  of  life  and 

7 


98  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

in  the  mystic  dominion  of  Works,  he  added  an 
emotional  consciousness  utterly  foreign  to  their 
temper.  This  was  an  exaggerated  and  highly 
irritable  sense  of  his  individual  personality.  Now 
the  personal  character  of  a  man,  as  we  of  the 
West  understand  it,  was  to  the  Hindu  a  transitory 
composite,  a  mere  aspect  of  the  general  illusion; 
while  the  Hebrew,  with  his  purely  concrete  in- 
telligence, carried  the  idea  into  the  very  heavens, 
and  made  of  his  Jehovah  the  most  intense  person- 
ality the  human  brain  has  ever  conceived.  The 
combination  of  these  two  ways  of  viewing  the 
world,  the  outer  sense  of  illusion  joined  to  an 
aggravated  self-consciousness,  gave  that  peculiar 
poignancy  to  Carlyle's  preaching  which  we  all 
feel,  but  do  not  always  stop  to  analyse.  Never 
before  perhaps  has  the  world  listened  to  the  mystic 
philosophy  of  illusion  thundered  forth  with  the 
virulence  and  tremendous  vehemence  of  a  Jere- 
miah or  an  Ezekiel.  It  was,  of  course,  the  He- 
brew element  in  his  character  that  impressed  and 
for  a  while  cowed  his  British  audience;  it  was  the 
Hindu  mysticism  that  rendered  his  doctrine  utterly 
unavailing  in  the  end  to  influence  the  current  of 
public  opinion. 

If  this  self-contradiction  of  Carlyle's  views  cre- 
ated the  singular  paradox  of  a  prophet  publicly 
feared  but  unheeded,  it  wrought  only  disaster  in 
his  domestic  life.  I  think  one  need  not  go  be- 
yond this  union  of  warring  traits  to  comprehend 
the  tumult  of  Carlyle's  own  conscience  and  the 


CARLYLE  99 

more  pathetic  tragedy  of  his  marriage.  We  can 
easily  beheve  him  when  he  says  he  is  no  man 
"  whom  it  is  desirable  to  be  too  close  to."  He 
moved  in  a  nightmare  of  fantastic  unrealities  and 
heard  only  the  "jabbering  of  spectres,"  but  with 
his  exacerbated  egotism  he  could  not  wave  them 
aside  as  mere  shadows,  and  rise  to  the  calm  of 
that  higher  self  which  can  smile  unconcerned  at 
the  idle  illusion.  He  was  among  them  and  of 
them;  they  beat  upon  his  brain  and  tortured  his 
nerves,  until  he  cried  out  like  a  bewildered,  much- 
buiFeted  Titan.  "  My  heart,"  he  exclaimed,  "  is 
burnt  with  fury  and  indignation  when  I  think  of 
being  cramped  and  shackled  and  tormented  as 
never  man  till  me  was."  The  very  trivialities  of 
life  must  loom  up  tremendously,  like  the  distorted 
images  seen  through  a  mist.  The  verj'  beasts 
and  dumb  things  of  the  earth  became  a  part  of  the 
infernal  Walpurgis  Night  that  weltered  about 
him,  and  the  human  beings  that  thwarted  him 
were  emissaries  of  Satan.  When  he  hears  a 
watchman  in  Edinburgh  proclaim  the  passing  of 
the  hours,  the  man  is  transformed  into  a  demon. 
"There  was  one  of  those  guardians  there,"  he 
says  in  a  letter,  "  whose  throat  I  could  have  cut 
that  night;  his  voice  was  loud,  hideous,  and  ear 
a-nd  soul  piercing,  resembling  the  voices  of  ten 
thousand  gib-cats  all  molten  into  one  terrific 
peal."  He  travels  in  Germany,  and  the  beds 
wring  a  scream  from  him  like  that  of  a  man 
broken  on  the   rack.     His  warfare   against   his 


100  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

neighbour's  cocks  has  become  a  part  of  history, 
and  when  workmen  entered  his  Chelsea  house  he 
fled  as  if  the  horrors  of  the  Inferno  had  broken  in 
upon  him.  There  is,  of  course,  an  element  of 
humorous  exaggeration  in  his  complaints;  grim, 
stentorian  humour  was  indeed  the  natural  product 
of  a  brain  so  strangely  and  contradictorily  com- 
pacted. But  to  himself  and  to  his  wife  the  merri- 
ment must  have  sounded  too  often  like  the  reputed 
laughter  of  the  pit.  "Ah  me!  People  ought  not 
to  be  angry  at  me,"  he  writes  in  a  letter  to  Jane. 
' '  People  ought  to  let  me  alone.  Perhaps  they 
would  if  they  rightlj'  understood  what  I  was 
doing  and  suffering  in  this  Life  Pilgrimage  at 
times." 

It  is  folly  to-day  to  enter  into  that  domestic  un- 
happiness  and  take  sides  for  one  or  the  other  of 
the  sufferers;  if  we  rightly  understand  Carlyle 
there  will  be  no  room  left  for  anger;  nor,  on  the 
other  hand,  shall  we  attempt  to  transfer  the  blame 
of  the  unhappiness  wholly  from  his  shoulders  to 
hers.  It  is  well  to  remember,  also,  how  often  the 
demonic  nature  of  the  world  and  of  his  own  tor- 
tured personality  sank  away  and  left  him  at 
peace;  how  often  the  illusion  of  life  detached 
itself  from  his  own  morbid  egotism  and  appeared 
as  a  scene  of  infinite  pathos,  a  matter  for  tears  and 
not  for  execrations.  At  these  times  his  heart  went 
out  in  tenderness,  and  his  letters  to  Jane  and  to 
others  are  filled  with  exquisite  love  and  simple 
sweetness  such  as  no  other  letters  of  the  language 


CARLYLE  lOI 

can  parallel.  If  we  were  compelled  to  select  a 
single  passage  which  showed  the  real  character 
of  the  man,  with  its  depth  and  brooding  insight, 
we  might  well  quote  these  words,  which  he  wrote 
to  his  brother  John: 

Last  night  I  sat  down  to  smoke  in  my  nightshirt  in 
the  back  yard.  It  was  one  of  the  beautifullest  nights; 
the  half-moon,  clear  as  silver  looked  out  as  from  eternity, 
and  the  great  dawn  was  streaming  up.  I  felt  a  remorse, 
a  kind  of  shudder,  at  the  fuss  I  was  making  about  a 
sleepless  night,  about  my  sorrow  at  all,  with  a  life  so 
soon  to  be  absorbed  into  the  great  mystery  above  and 
around  me.  Oh  !  let  us  be  patient.  Let  us  call  to  God 
with  our  silent  hearts,  if  we  cannot  with  our  tongues. 

There  the  unrest  of  his  soul  dies  away  and  the 
clear  serenity  of  the  philosopher  speaks  out. 

I  have  thus  attempted  to  find  a  key  to  the 
peculiar  paradox  of  Carlyle's  life  and  writings  in 
the  extraordinary  union  within  one  man  of  the 
spirit  of  the  Hindu  seer  and  the  Hebrew  prophet 
— although  of  direct  influence  from  India  there  is, 
of  course,  no  suggestion  intended.  It  would  not 
be  difficult,  indeed,  to  show  that  something  of 
this  paradoxical  temperament  is  inherent  in  the 
Scotch  character,  and  that  Carlyle  inherited  it 
from  his  people  and  his  surroundings  as  he 
acquired  the  remarkable  qualities  of  his  style. 
The  transition  from  the  pages  of  such  writers  as 
John  Knox  and  Rutherford  and  Peden  and 
Hutcheson  to  his  own  consummate  eloquence  is 
less  marked  than  might  commonly  be  supposed. 

UNIOSIIT  OF  CALirCRWA 

RIVERSIDE 


102  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

But  beyond  such  inheritance  lies  the  genius  of  the 
man  himself,  the  mystery  of  his  brain,  which  no 
study  of  tradition  or  acquisition  will  explain.  He 
stands  in  Fronde's  biography  a  figure  unique,  iso- 
lated, domineering — after  Dr.  Johnson  the  greatest 
personality  in  English  letters,  possibly  even  more 
imposing  than  that  acknowledged  dictator. 


THE   SCIENCE  OF  ENGLISH  VERSE 

Mr.  Mark  H.  Liddell,  formerly  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Texas,  has  written  a  httle  book  '  on  the 
scientific  study  of  English  poetry  which  is  not 
without  interesting  suggestions.  It  is  a  pity, 
however,  that  he  should  have  adopted  a  tone  of 
such  revolutionary  violence  as  is  likely  to  dis- 
credit what  is  really  valuable  in  his  work.  There 
were  brave  men  before  Agamemnon's  time,  and 
there  have  been  "scientific"  students  of  verse 
even  before  this  present  year  of  grace.  And  is  it 
quite  prudent  for  a  writer  on  a  subject  which  has 
been  treated  by  a  succession  of  sincere  scholars 
through  many  centuries  to  assert  so  frankly,  what- 
ever his  secret  thoughts  may  be,  that  all  who 
preceded  him  were  mere  indulgers  in  empty  meta- 
physics, silly  idolaters  before  those  awful  idola  of 
error  which  Bacon  discovered  and  laid  bare  in  the 
market-place  and  elsewhere?  "The  conclusion 
of  the  whole  matter,"  says  Mr.  Liddell  at  the  end 
of  his  treatise,  ' '  points  but  in  one  direction — the 

'  An  Introduction  to  the  Scientific  Study  of  English 
Poetry.  By  Mark  H.  Liddell.  New  York:  Doubleday, 
Page  &  Co.     1902. 

103 


I04  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

necessity  of  considering  literature  as  material  of 
science,  and  not  as  a  subject  for  pleasant  talk." 

Now  Mr.  Ividdell's  consideration  of  literature  as 
material  of  science  is  divided  into  two  parts,  the 
first  having  to  do  with  a  general  discussion  of  the 
elements  of  poetry,  the  second  being  confined 
more  exclusively  to  rhythm  in  verse.  In  sum- 
ming up  the  argument  of  the  first  part  he  ex- 
presses himself  as  follows  (p.  140): 

The  general  notion  of  poetry  we  thus  obtained  was: 
ideas  normally  formulated  in  the  terms  of  correlated 
sound-group-images,  possessing  the  general  and  abiding 
human  interest  of  literature,  and  rendered  aesthetically 
interesting  by  being  couched  in  recognisably  aesthetic 
Verse  Form.     Or,  stated  as  a  formula:  x  +  HI  -f  VF. 

Evidently  the  author  has  been  at  some  pains  to 
avoid  "  pleasant  talk"  and  to  be  strictly  scientific. 
He  lets  X  stand  for  the  underlying  idea  of  the 
poem,  HI  for  its  human  interest,  and  VF  for  its 
verse  form.  A  poem,  in  other  words,  must  con- 
tain some  thought  or  idea  expressed  in  normal 
language;  it  must  further  possess  some  general 
human  interest;  and  it  must  be  in  verse  form. 
Why,  of  course;  we  all  know  that.  M.  Jourdain, 
in  the  play,  was  amazed  to  learn  that  he  had  been 
speaking  prose  all  his  life;  on  translating  Mr. 
Liddell's  formula  we  are  flattered  to  find  that  we 
have  been  thinking,  if  not  speaking,  science  all 
along  without  ever  suspecting  it.  The  pity  of  it 
is  that  our  dulness  should  have   required  one 


ENGLISH    VERSE  10$ 

hundred  and  forty  pages  of  strenuous  argument 
to  receive  such  enlightenment.  And,  seriously, 
is  it  not  regrettable  that  jargon  of  this  kind  should 
be  allowed  to  drown  some  really  clever  bits  of 
criticism?  For  instance,  the  contrast  instituted 
(p.  30  fF.)  between  Shakespeare's  "  After  life's 
fitful  fever  he  sleeps  well  "  and  the  same  thought 
in  prose  form,  is  neatly  done  and  is  interesting, 
though  it  may  contain  nothing  that  borders  on 
revolutionary  originality. 

But  it  is  the  second  part  of  the  book  which 
forms  the  heart  of  Mr.  Liddell's  argument;  and 
if  I  have  seemed  to  dwell  at  too  great  length  on 
the  introductory  matter,  it  was  in  the  desire  to 
set  forth  the  peculiar  tone  that  has  crept  into  the 
scientific  discussion  of  rhythm  from  various 
literary  sources.  It  is  in  this  second  part  that  the 
author  pours  out  the  vials  of  his  wrath  against 
his  predecessors  who  were  reckless  enough  to 
contradict  him  by  anticipation.  Indeed,  the  de- 
sired dispassionateness  of  scientific  research  is 
more  than  once  broken  in  these  pages  by  a  re- 
crudescence of  the  old  and  rancorous  debate  be- 
tween the  ancients  and  the  moderns.  That  debate 
was  amusing  when  Swift  sent  forth  his  Battle  of 
the  Books;  it  is  hardly  amusing  to-da3\  And 
then  it  is  so  likely  to  carry  a  man  away  from 
calm  investigation  into  dreary  outbreaks  of  the 
odium  philologicum.  Any  one  not  blinded  by  this 
malign  disease  might  see,  you  would  suppose, 
that  the  cou-testants  ou  both  sides  are  equally 


Io6  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

wrong-headed — both  those  who  frenetically  deny- 
any  similarity  between  classic  and  English 
rhythms,  and  those  who  obstinately  uphold  their 
complete  identity. 

As  for  the  upcropping  of  this  odium philologicum 
in  the  present  treatise,  one  wonders  a  little  at  the 
wherefore.  Part  of  its  animus,  no  doubt,  is  due 
to  the  author's  inadequate  knowledge  of  the 
classics.  For  instance,  a  very  little  reading  would 
have  prevented  such  a  categorical  statement  as 
this  (p.  112),  "  But  [in  contrast  to  the  English] 
there  is  ample  evidence  to  show  that  an  absolute 
and  fixed  proportion  [between  long  and  short 
syllables]  did  exist  in  the  classic  languages; "  or 
this  (p.  65),  "We  shall  look  in  vain  in  Greek 
poetry  for  an  aesthetic  appeal  based  upon  varia- 
tions of  intensity  of  syllables."  Aristoxenus, 
more  than  two  thousand  years  ago,  exposed  the 
folly  of  that  first  error;  and  as  for  the  second,  the 
weight  of  evidence  is  strongly  in  favour  of  sup- 
posing that  the  feet  in  a  Greek  verse  were  marked 
off  by  a  slight  "  intensity  of  syllables."  That  (p. 
26)  the  author  speaks  disparagingly  of  the  "  vatus 
insanus,"  we  would  wiUingly  charge  to  negligent 
proof-reading  were  it  not  that  elsewhere  (p.  294) 
he,  though  a  professed  student  of  Shakespeare, 
misquotes  the  bard  so  as  to  achieve  the  rhythm, 
"  O  nymph,  in  thy  o-rz-sons." 

But  in  part  Mr.  Liddell's  celestial  ire  against 
the  classics  is  justified  by  the  infinite  confusion 
wrought  in  English  prosody  by  the  ill-advised 


ENGLISH   VERSE  10/ 

critics,  from  Gabriel  Harvey  down,  who  have 
failed  to  distinguish  between  the  nature  of  quan- 
titative measure  in  Greek  and  in  the  Teutonic 
languages.  So  irritating  is  this  confusion  to  Mr. 
Ividdell's  Anglo-Saxon  sensibilities  that  he  goes 
to  the  other  extreme,  and  denies  that  the  length 
or  shortness  of  an  English  syllable  has  anything 
whatsoever  to  do  with  the  forms  of  English  verse 
— although  he  does  elsewhere  admit  grudgingly 
the  existence  of  quantitative  distinctions  in  Eng- 
lish pronunciation.  Rhythm,  he  thinks,  is  in  no- 
wise determined  by  the  measurement  of  time  but 
by  the  counting  off  of  accented  and  unaccented 
syllables.  Just  why  he  should  involve  this  in- 
complete and  often  exploded  theory  in  such  a  fury 
of  hard  language,  it  is  not  easy  to  say.  Perhaps 
he  deems  it  scientific  to  be  obscure.  "  We  have 
determined,"  he  writes  in  conclusion  (p.  310), 
"that  the  fundamental  element  of  our  English 
verse-punctuation  is  that  concomitant  of  ideation 
which  we  have  called  attention-stress."  This  is 
a  "  scientific"  (it  seems  rather  metaphysic)  state- 
ment which  may  be  interpreted  to  the  merely 
literary  by  explaining  that  "  verse- punctuation  " 
means  feet;  that  "  attention-stress"  means  stress 
or  accent,  which  of  course  catches  the  attention; 
and  that  *'  concomitant  of  ideation  "  implies  that 
the  accent  is  governed  by  the  thought.  To 
such  a  pass  has  the  odium  philologicum  brought 
us! 
The  wonder  of  it  all  is  that  so  simple  a  matter 


I08  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

as  verse-rhythm  should  have  raised  so  noisy  a 
commotion.  I  am  myself  tempted  to  discuss  the 
subject  briefly,  afiecting  some  assurance  of  tone 
not  because  I  hope  to  introduce  scientific  accuracy 
where  hitherto  empty  rhetoric  has  reigned  su- 
preme, but  contrariwise  because  the  whole  subject 
has  already  received  such  adequate  treatment  by 
others.  From  three  readily  accessible  books  one 
may  learn  all  that  is  essential  to  English  prosody 
—  The  Science  of  English  Verse,  by  Sidney  Lanier; 
Chapters  on  Greek  Metric,  by  T.  W.  Goodell;  and 
Englische  Metrik,  by  J.  Schipper.  Lanier's  bril- 
liant work  is  unexceptionable  as  a  study  of  the 
ideal  or  tnodel  verse,  but  fails  to  consider  the  vari- 
ance between  the  ideal  and  the  actual  rhythm.  A 
large  part  of  Prof.  Goodell' s  volume  deals  with 
this  very  question,  and  thus  supplements  Lanier's 
theory.  Prof.  Goodell  is  concerned  primarily 
with  Greek  rhythms,  but  in  his  third  chapter  he 
gives  the  clearest  and  sanest  discussion  of  rhythm 
in  general  that  I  have  yet  seen — and  to  my  sorrow 
I  have  read  much  on  the  subject.  Dr.  Schipper's 
volumes  form  a  work  of  vast  Gelehrsamkeit  and 
are  invaluable  as  a  storehouse  of  material. 

But  as  a  text  for  my  explanation  I  choose  rather 
to  take  the  statement  of  one  who  certainly  cannot 
be  accused  of  deficient  science,  of  one  who  is  in- 
deed recognised  by  the  scientific  world  as  the 
highest  possible  authority  in  all  questions  of 
sound.  In  Helraholtz's  Toyicmpfindungen  these 
words  may  be  found  (Hllis's  Translation,  p.  388): 


ENGLISH   VERSE  IO9 

The  scientific,  as  -well  as  all  other  measurement  of 
time,  depends  on  the  rhythmical  recurrence  of  similar 
events,  the  revolution  of  the  earth  or  moon,  or  the  swings 
of  a  pendulum.  Thus  also  the  regular  alternation  of 
accentuated  and  unaccentuated  sounds  in  music  and 
poetry  gives  the  measure  of  time  for  the  composition. 
But  whereas  in  poetry  the  construction  of  the  verse 
serves  only  to  reduce  the  external  accidents  of  linguistic 
expression  to  artistic  order;  in  music,  rhythm,  as  the 
measure  of  time,  belongs  to  the  inmost  nature  of  expres- 
sion. Hence  also  a  much  more  delicate  and  elaborate 
development  of  rhythm  was  required  in  music  than  in 
verse. 

From  this  genuinely  scientific  statement  the 
three  laws  of  verse-rhythm  may  be  formulated  as 
follows : 

I.  Rhythm  in  verse  is  not  the  product  of  either 
classical  or  Anglo-Saxon  pedantry,  but  is  a  branch 
of  acoustics  and  is  amenable  to  the  great  rhythmic 
law  of  nature. 

II.  Rhythm  in  verse,  like  all  rhythm,  is  a 
measurement  of  time  marked  off"  by  the  regular 
recurrence  of  similar  events. 

III.  Rhythm  in  verse  is  a  mere  approximation, 
much  less  absolute  and  regular  than  rhythm  in 
music,  which  is  nearest  akin  to  it. 

Let  us  examine  these  three  laws  in  order. 

I.  First  of  all,  then,  rhythm  in  verse  is  a  branch 
of  the  scientific  study  of  sound,  and  has  nothing 
to  do  with  grammar  or  logic  or  numbers  or 
thought.  It  is  as  amenable  to  law  as  any  other 
phenomenon  within  the  realm  of  acoustics.     To 


no  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

speak  of  rhythm  in  numbers  or  the  rhythm  of 
thought  is  a  mere  metaphorical  use  of  words,  an 
introduction  of  metaphysics  where  science  should 
reign.  Rhythm  may  be  an  instrument  to  express 
thought  or  emotion,  and  in  this  way  thought  or 
emotion  may  govern  rhythm;  but  the  rhythm  re- 
mains as  distinct  from  the  thought  or  emotion  as 
the  swaying  of  our  limbs  from  the  nerve  impulse 
that  moves  them.  Rhythm  is  purely  a  matter  of 
the  senses.  Doggerel  verses  which  convey  no 
meaning  may  still  be  highly  rhythmical. 

II.  Now  every  appeal  to  the  senses  must  be 
some  act  of  energy  perceived  through  the  media 
of  space  and  time.  Symmetry  has  to  do  with 
phenomena  as  determined  in  space;  rhythm,  with 
phenomena  as  determined  in  time.  To  distin- 
guish: Suppose  a  man  at  a  blackboard  to  be 
drawing  a  continuous  line.  If  this  line  in  the 
end  produces  a  regularly  repeated  figure,  the  de- 
sign is  symmetrical.  The  time  of  the  drawing 
and  the  rapidity  of  the  man's  movements  are  not 
here  concerned.  If,  however,  the  figure  traced 
be  without  design,  but  if  the  drawer  at  regular  in- 
tervals of  time  makes  some  peculiar  and  repeated 
movement  with  his  hand,  then  the  resulting  figure 
drawn  will  not  be  sj'mmetrical,  but  the  motion  of 
the  drawer's  hand  while  drawing  will  be  rhythmi- 
cal.    Symmetry  is  static.  rb3^thra  is  kinetic. 

The  commonest  form  of  rhythm  is,  of  course, 
the  rhvthm  of  sound.  And  here  let  it  be  noted 
chat  such  rhythm  is  not  a  mere  division  of  time 


ENGLISH   VERSE  III 

(which  would  be  a  metaphysical  conception),  but 
a  division  of  sound  in  time.  To  illustrate:  A 
succession  of  perfectly  similar  sounds  at  regular 
intervals  of  time  is  not  rhythmical.  There  is  in- 
herently no  rhythm  in  a  succession  of  equal  drum 
beats  at  intervals  of  a  second,  or  in  a  regular  suc- 
cession of  indistinguishable  whistles.  To  produce 
rhythm,  you  must  mark  off  certain  sounds  so  as 
to  divide  the  series  into  groups  occupying  equal 
measures  of  time.  For  example,  there  is  rhythm 
in  the  drum  beats  to  which  we  march ;  there  would 
be  rhythm  in  a  succession  of  whistles  such  as  an 
engine  emits  on  approaching  a  road. 

There  are  three  properties  of  sound  which  may 
be  so  used  in  marking  off  these  groups.  At 
regular  intervals  of  time  the  sound  may  be  dis- 
tinguished from  the  others  (i)  by  duration,  or  (2) 
by  pitch,  or  (3)  by  stress  or  loudness.  The  first 
rhythm  would  undoubtedly  be  the  weakest,  the 
third  would  be  the  strongest.  Any  combination 
would  be  still  stronger,  as  tending  to  mark  off  the 
intervals  of  time  more  emphatically  to  the  ear. 

Now  this  rhythmic  sense  is  one  of  the  most  in- 
sistent in  human  nature,  so  insistent  that,  given 
any  regular  succession  of  sounds,  it  produces  the 
illusion  of  rhythm  when  none  actually  exists. 
For  instance,  it  is  impossible  to  listen  to  the  tick- 
ing of  a  clock  without  imagining  some  difference 
between  the  alternate  strokes  such  as  will  mark 
off  the  sounds  into  rhythmic  groups.  Every 
other  stroke  seems  to  be  at  once  a  little  longer,  a 


112  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

little  higher  in  pitch,  and  louder — tic  tac,  tic  t4c, 
tic  tdc,  etc.  That  this  diflference  of  sound  is 
imaginary  becomes  evident  from  the  ease  with 
which  we  may  vary  the  succession  at  will.  The 
conclusion  is  this:  Rhythm  exists  only  when  some 
diversity  of  sound  marks  off  regular  intervals  of 
time  within  each  of  which  some  sound  occurs. 

The  application  of  this  law  to  language  is  per- 
fectly simple.  Here  the  equal  measurement  of 
time  is  determined:  (i)  by  the  regular  recurrence 
of  syllables  distinguished  in  length,  in  which  case 
the  rhythm  may  be  called  quantitative  ;  (2)  by  the 
regular  recurrence  of  syllables  distinguished  in 
pitch,  in  which  case  the  rhythm  may  be  called 
melodic;  (3)  by  the  regular  recurrence  of  syllables 
distinguished  in  stress,  in  which  case  the  rhythm 
may  be  called  accentual.  The  practice  of  lan- 
guages may  vary  among  these  three  forms  ;  but 
in  all  languages,  where  rhythm  exists  at  all,  the 
fundamental  law  of  rhythm  must  be  observed, — 
there  must  be  a  periodic  measurement  of  time. 
The  tedious  battle  of  the  books  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  certain  scholars,  blinded  by  their  classical 
predilections,  emphasise  the  fundamental  similar- 
ity of  rhythm  in  all  languages  (in  the  classics  and 
Enghsh,  specifically),  but  fail  to  recognise  the  ac- 
cidental varieties;  whereas  certain  other  scholars, 
influenced  like  Mr.  Liddell  by  their  Teutonic 
studies,  consider  the  accidental  variation  alone 
and  are  ill  disposed  to  acknowledge  any  funda- 
mental similarity.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  to  make 


ENGLISH   VERSE  II3 

such  a  logomachy  more  inaue,  the  rhythmic  divi- 
sion of  time  ill  both  Greek  and  English  was  prob- 
ably marked  by  the  same  combination  of  the  first 
and  third  manners — was  at  once,  that  is,  quanti- 
tative and  accentual.  Only  there  is  this  distinc- 
tion (which  explains  if  it  does  not  justify  the 
dispute),  that  in  Greek  quantitative  rhythm  was 
strongly  predominant,  so  much  so  that  some 
scholars  deny  the  presence  of  accentual  rhythm  at 
all,  whereas  in  English  accentual  rhythm  is  pre- 
dominant. Thus  iamljic  rhythm  in  Greek  is  a 
series  of  equal  measures  of  time,  each  measure 
containing  a  short  syllable  followed  by  a  much 
longer  syllable;  but  it  is  also  practically  certain 
that  the  long  syllables  were,  as  a  rule,  further 
marked  by  a  slight  stress  accent.  In  English  this 
iambic  rhythm  is  a  series  of  equal  measures  of 
time,  each  containing  an  unaccented  syllable  fol- 
lowed by  a  strongly  accented  syllable;  but  it  is 
further  true  that  the  accented  syllable  tends,  al- 
though not  inevitably,  to  become  slightly  longer 
than  the  unaccented  syllable.  It  is  therefore 
proper  to  call  Greek  rhythm  quantitative  and 
English  rhythm  accentual.  It  is,  however,  au 
absurdity  to  say  that  the  length  of  syllables  has 
nothing  to  do  with  English  rhythm.  The  order 
of  quantities  within  the  feet  may  sometimes  vary, 
but  the  quantity  of  the  combined  syllables  within 
each  foot  must  be  such  as  to  divide  the  verse  into 
measures  of  equal  time,  exactly  as  music  is  divided 
into  bars. 

8 


114  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

Quantity  is  indeed  the  root  of  the  whole  debate, 
and  it  may  be  well  to  insist  on  the  question  a  little 
more.  The  discussion  has  arisen  from  a  misunder- 
standing of  quantity  in  both  the  classics  and 
Knglish.  The  quantity  of  a  Greek  syllable  is  de- 
termined by  fixed  laws  of  pronunciation  and  is 
always  the  same,  and,  further,  a  long  syllable  is 
reckoned  as  occupying  twice  the  time  of  a  short; 
hence  quantitative  rhythm  in  Greek  assumes  the 
simplicity  of  an  arithmetical  ratio.  In  English, 
on  the  other  hand,  neither  of  these  laws  holds 
good;  hence  the  non  seqicitur,  because  Knglish 
quantity  does  not  follow  the  laws  of  Greek  quan- 
tity therefore  there  is  no  quantity  at  all  in  Eng- 
lish. But,  unless  one  is  willing  to  assert  that 
such  a  syllable  as  btcrsts  is  not  longer  in  pro- 
nunciation than  at,  it  is  folly  to  deny  the  existence 
of  quantity  in  English.  Only  it  remains  true  that 
quantity  in  English,  while  fixed  by  the  laws  of 
enunciation  in  some  syllables,  varies  in  other  syl- 
lables according  to  their  emphasis  in  the  sentence. 
And,  further,  the  scheme  by  which  a  long  syllable 
in  Greek  is  reckoned  as  double  a  short  syllable  is 
— and  was  so  recognised  by  the  most  authorita- 
tive of  Greek  metricians — a  mere  fiction  of  the 
grammarians  to  simplify  the  schematisation  of 
rhythms.  If  Mr.  Liddell,  and  others  who  accept 
literally  this  ideal  schematisation,  should  reflect  a 
moment  (not  to  mention  the  profit  of  reading  the 
authorities  on  the  subject),  they  would  see  that  no 
language  is  or  ever  was  pronounced  with  such 


ENGLISH   VERSE 


"5 


wooden  regularity.  It  is  only  true  to  say  that 
the  difference  in  Greek  between  long  and  short 
syllables,  though  varying,  was  very  decided,  and 
approximated  roughly  the  ratio  of  2  to  i.  In 
English  the  difference  in  quantity  is  ordinarily 
much  less  than  in  Greek,  but  to  assert  that 
quantity  has  no  function  in  English  rhythm  be- 
cause English  quantities  do  not  have  the  Greek 
ratio  of  2  to  I,  is  to  fall  into  a  double  and  really 
unpardonable  error. 

A  concrete  comparison  will  throw  light  on  the 
confusion.  The  first  verse  of  the  Odyssey  reads 
and  is  scanned  as  follows: 


Andra  moi    eanepe     iiiousa  po-    lytropon 


hos 


mala     poUa 


The  first  verse  ai Evangelme  is  scanned: 


This  is  the 


forest  pri- 


meval the 


murmunng 


pines 


and  the    hemlocks 


Now  it  will  be  observed  that  these  two  hexa- 
meters are  essentially  the  same.  They  both  con- 
sist of  .six  equal  measures  of  time,  each  measure 
normally  containing  one  long  accented  syllable 


Il6  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

followed  either  by  two  short  unaccented  syllables 
or  by  one  long  unaccented  syllable.  But  in  their 
secondary  characteristics  the  two  verses  differ 
considerably.  In  the  Greek  verse  the  initial  long 
syllables  are  much  longer  than  the  short  syllables, 
are  in  fact  approximatel}'  equal  to  the  time  of  the 
two  short  syllables  taken  together.  They  are 
thus  sufficiently  distinct  to  mark  off  the  measures 
by  their  quantitative  value.  But  these  initial 
syllables  have  also  a  slight  stress  accent,  which  is 
the  pure  result  of  the  inherent  rhythmising  in- 
stinct of  the  human  mind.  This  rhythmical  stress 
is  made  possible  by  the  fact  that  Greek  words  in 
normal  prose  enunciation  possess  no  regular  stress 
accent  at  all  such  as  English  words  possess.  In 
the  English  verse,  on  the  contrary,  the  initial 
syllables  all  have  a  normal  stress  due  to  the 
regular  verbal  or  sentence  accent,  and  this  stress 
is  reenforced  by  the  rhythmising  instinct.  Hence 
the  accent  alone  is  sufficient  to  mark  off  the  meas- 
ures, and  it  is  possible  for  the  arrangement  of  the 
quantities  within  a  measure  to  vary  considerably, 
provided  only  that  the  sum  of  the  quantities  re- 
mains fixed.  In  the  foot  "pines  and  the"  the 
first  syllable  is  approximately  the  length  of  the 
two  following  syllables  together;  in  the  foot  "this 
is  the,"  however,  the  three  syllables  are  about 
the  same;  and  between  these  two  extremes  every 
shade  of  difference  may  exist.  Only  it  will  be 
found  a  pretty  constant  rule  that  the  first  syllable 
is  slightly  longer  than  the  others  if  there  are  three 


ENGLISH   VERSE  II7 

in  the  foot,  and  a  still  more  constant  rule  that  the 
measures  of  the  verse  consist  in  full  of  equivalent 
periods  of  time.  There  is  quantity  in  both  Greek 
and  English,  .but  it  is  quite  proper  to  designate 
the  Greek  verse  as  primarily  quantitative,  and  the 
English  verse  as  primarily  accentual. 

I  have  as  yet  said  nothing  of  the  pitch  accent, 
for  the  reason  that  the  subject  is  one  of  some  ob- 
scurity. It  is,  however,  almost  certain  that  the 
regular  accent  of  a  Greek  word  was  a  pitch  accent, 
as  distinguished  from  the  English  stress  accent. 
It  did  not  fall  necessarily  on  the  same  syllable 
with  the  rhythmical  stress  accent,  and  produced 
thus  something  of  the  effect  of  melody  in  the 
recitation  of  Greek  verse.  In  English  this  pitch 
accent  is  a  more  complicated  question.  It  plays 
a  little-recognised  part  in  the  function  of  rhythm, 
but  my  own  observation  leads  me  to  believe  that 
it  is  often  used  to  mark  off  the  time  measurement, 
when  the  stress  accent,  by  some  apparent  irregu- 
larity of  construction,  does  not  correspond  to  the 
rhythmic  divisions. 

III.  But  all  this  has  to  do  with  the  ideal  or 
model  rhythm,  and  we  have  still  to  consider  the 
third  law  derived  from  Helmholtz's  statement — a 
law  so  important  that  the  neglect  of  it  in  Sidney 
Lanier's  treatise  vitiates  to  a  certain  extent  that 
poet's  brilliant  theory.  In  the  actual  reading  of 
poetry  two  distinct,  even  contradictory,  impulses 
will  be  found  at  work — the  rhythmising  instinct 
and  the  normal  unrhythmical  enunciation  of  the 


Il8  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

language.     The  result  is  a  compromise  shifting 
toward  one  extreme  or  the  other. 

As  for  the  rhythmising  instinct  in  verse,  that  is 
merely  one  clause  of  a  law  which  runs  through 
every  manifestation  of  energy,  of  a  law  so  uni- 
versal that  it  would  appear  as  if  the  great  heart  of 
nature  beat  with  a  regular  systole  and  diastole, 
sending  impulses  of  rhythmic  motion  through 
every  artery  of  the  world.  So  strong  is  this  in- 
stinct in  us  that  a  child  in  reading  verse  falls 
unconsciously  into  a  monotonous,  undeviating 
singsong  which  without  hesitation  sacrifices  sense 
and  ordinary  pronunciation.  When  a  child  re- 
cites his  Mother  Goose,  you  may  beat  time  to  his 
words  as  easily  as  you  beat  time  to  a  dance  tune. 
The  process  of  adapting  the  ordinary  pronuncia- 
tion of  language  to  this  rhythmic  impulse  is  called 
plasma,  and  was  observed  by  the  Greek  metri- 
cians long  ago,  as  it  may  readily  be  observed  by 
us  to-day.  By  plasma  we  lengthen  a  syllable 
here  and  shorten  a  syllable  there,  so  as  to  get  the 
exact  measure  of  time  within  a  foot,  and  where 
lengthening  is  not  sufficient  we  insert  a  pause 
corresponding  precisely  in  its  rhythmical  effect  to 
the  pauses  in  music.  How  exact  the  rhythm 
may  be  made  through  plasma  is  exemplified  in 
the  curious  game  of  "  Pease  porridge  hot,"  as  I 
was  taught  it,  or  "  Bean  porridge  hot,"  as  Pro- 
fessor Goodell  calls  it,  from  a  Yankee  boyhood 
presumably,  I  shall  not  attempt  to  explain — 
what  every  one  must  have  learned  as  a  child — the 


ENGLISH   VERSE  II9 

manner  in  which  the  recitation  of  these  words  is 
accompanied  by  a  play  of  the  hands  which  marks 
oflF  the  rhythm  with  absolute  regularity. 

Pease  porridge  hot 
Pease  porridge  cold 
Pease  porridge  in  the  pot 
Nine  days  old. 

So  the  words  run,  and  the  rhythm  falls  into  this 
precise  scheme,  the  macron  representing  twice  the 
time  of  a  breve,  and  an  inverted  v  representing  a 
pause  equal  in  length  to  a  breve: 


The  result,  however,  of  giving  this  rhythmising 
instinct  full  play  is  to  render  our  reading  in- 
tolerably monotonous  and  to  sacrifice  the  sense  to 
meaningless  sound.  The  ordinary  teacher  in  our 
schools,  seeing  this  deplorable  effect,  drills  his 
pupils  to  avoid  this  instinct  and  to  read  verse 
"just  as  if  it  were  prose."  As  a  consequence, 
most  men,  being  neither  natural  nor  educated, 
but  only  half-educated,  do  indeed  read  verse  as  if 
it  were  prose,  succeeding  so  admirably  that  the 


I20  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

rhythm  is  lost  altogether.  For  it  must  be  ob- 
served that  the  normal  pronunciation  of  language 
does  not  produce  any  such  regular  rhythm  as  the 
poet  has  before  him  in  mind  when  he  composes. 
Verse  differs  from  prose  in  this :  that  in  verse  the 
words  are  so  ordered  that  their  normal  pronuncia- 
tion approximates  closely  enough  to  a  rhythmical 
scheme  to  permit  the  rhythmising  instinct  by 
means  of  plasma  to  produce  a  distinguishable 
rhythm  without  doing  great  violence  to  the  sense. 
Hence  no  arrangement  of  words  is  really  rhyth- 
mical to  the  half-educated  ear  which  through 
false  training  resists  the  rhythmising  instinct. 
Poetry  as  read  by  most  people  is  hardly,  if  at  all, 
distinguishable  from  prose,  unless  it  be  for  the  re- 
currence of  rhymes;  and  it  is  correct,  I  believe,  to 
say  that  not  a  single  actor  on  the  English  stage 
to-day  recites  blank  verse  so  as  to  distinguish  it 
clearly  from  prose.  Edwin  Booth  was  the  last, 
so  far  as  I  know,  to  preserve  a  nice  obedience  to 
the  rhythmising  instinct,  while  never  sacrificing 
the  sense  to  it. 

The  proper  reading  of  verse  is  thus  a  cunning 
compromise  between  our  rhythmising  instinct  and 
the  normal  prose  pronunciation  of  the  words. 
The  compromise  varies  with  every  reader  and 
with  each  reader's  differing  moods;  and  for  this 
reason,  if  for  no  other,  any  attempt  to  adopt  a  pre- 
cise schematisation  for  verse  must  fail  of  general 
validity.  The  old  system  of  macrons  and  breves 
with  the  accent  is  probably  the  best,  after  all,  so 


ENGLISH   VERSE  121 

long  as  we  remember  that  in  Greek,  and  still 
more  in  English,  such  a  S5'stem  represents  only  a 
rough  approximation  of  the  reality.  Listen  to  a 
good  reader  attentively,  and  for  a  while  you  will 
be  able  to  beat  time  to  the  rhythm  of  the  verse  as 
accurately  as  to  music;  then  suddenly,  through 
some  stress  of  feeling  or  some  desire  to  avoid 
monotony,  the  rhythm  will  be  loosened  to  an  un- 
measured flow  of  sounds,  only  to  fall  again  into 
the  regular  singsong.  The  final  impression  sug- 
gests the  rhj^thm  of  music,  only  much  freer  and 
more  capricious  than  a  musician  could  properly 
give  to  his  performance.  If  we  may  trust  a  large 
number  of  anecdotes,  the  great  poets,  in  reading 
their  own  verse,  pronounced  it  with  a  strong  sing- 
song effect,  showing  that  they  had  in  their  minds 
an  ideal  rhj'thm  of  perfect  ratios,  from  which 
every  deviation  seemed  to  them  an  irregularity. 
It  is  probable,  too,  that  the  Greeks  and  Romans 
chanted  their  verse  with  much  more  of  musical 
singsong  than  seems  permissible  to  our  more 
sophisticated  ears. 


ARTHUR  SYMONS:   THE  TWO 
ILLUSIONS 

It  is  a  saying  of  Joubert,  as  subtle  as  it  is  true, 
that  the  essence  of  art  is  to  be  found  in  the  union 
oi  V  illusion  et  la  sag  esse, — illusion  and,  to  extend 
the  meaning  of  the  French  phrase  somewhat,  dis- 
illusion; and  for  one  who  cares  to  penetrate  into 
the  secret  influences  of  poetry  on  the  human  heart, 
no  better  guide  can  be  suggested  than  this  brief 
sentence.  But  like  all  such  generalisations  it  is 
susceptible  of  a  false  application  in  practice  as  well 
as  a  right  one,  a  distinction  which  has  been  newly 
and  emphatically  attested  by  the  publication  of 
the  collected  poems  of  Mr.  Arthur  Symons.  For 
there  is  a  true  illusion  without  which  poetry  can- 
not exist,  without  which  it  sinks  to  the  level  of 
unimaginative  prose  or  passes  into  the  thin  aridi- 
ties of  metaphysics.  In  its  simplest  form  this 
illusion  may,  perhaps,  be  seen  in  the  pastoral 
world  of  our  Elizabethan  poets,  in  the  Lycidas  and 
Comus  of  Milton  best  of  all;  and  the  skill  to  lend 
reality  to  these  idyllic  dreams  might  even  seem 
one  of  the  surest  tests  of  a  poet's  right  to  deal 
with  the  high  illusion  of  art.  Lycidas  springs 
from  this  theme  just  as  much  as  the  youthful 


ARTHUR   SYMONS  1 23 

Pastorals  of  Pope,  but  what  a  chasm  there  hes  be- 
tween them!  As  the  poet's  thoughts  and  aspira- 
tions are  lifted  up  beyond  the  thoughts  of  common 
men,  so  he  is  able  without  violating  artistic  illu- 
sion to  carry  his  reader  into  ideal  scenes  never 
beheld  on  this  earth.  The  noble  isolation  of 
Milton's  soul  schooled  him  to  speak  understand- 
ingly  the  ideal  language  of  Arcadia,  and  some- 
thing within  our  souls  responds  to  every  word. 
But  in  the  mouth  of  a  worldling  like  Pope  this 
language  becomes  a  shallow  affectation  and  con- 
veys no  illusion  of  reality  to  the  reader. 

And  if  you  wish  to  see  the  power  of  poetic  illu- 
sion exemplified  in  a  more  general  form  than  the 
pretty  deceptions  of  Arcadia,  turn  to  any  of  the 
greater  plays  of  Shakespeare,  to  Hamlet,  which 
will  make  you  believe  for  the  space  of  a  few  hours 
that  human  life  really  revolves  about  such  mystic 
musings  and  expresses  itself  in  such  rapt  language 
as  the  mad  Dane's,  or  to  The  Tempest,  in  which 
the  poet  has  symbolised  his  own  powers  of  en- 
chantment in  the  wizard  Prospero.  And  yet,  side 
by  side  with  this  illusion,  there  must  always  in 
the  greater  poets  run  a  note  of  disillusion, — a  note 
subdued  for  the  most  part  so  as  scarcely  to  be 
heard,  but  rising  to  the  surface  now  and  again 
with  a  strange  quivering  of  mingled  sadness  and 
joy,  of  sadness  for  the  fair  enchantment  it  dispels, 
of  joy  for  the  glimpse  it  affords  into  something 
divine  and  very  high.  You  may  hear  this  note  of 
disillusion  many  times  in  Shakespeare,  clearest  of 


124  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

all  in  The  Tempest,  where  with  a  word  Prospero 
puts  an  end  to  his  fairy  drama  in  the  woods,  and 
all  the  insubstantial  pageant  fades  away. 

For  one  acquainted  with  Oriental  literature  it  is 
impossible  to  reflect  on  this  illusion  of  art  without 
recurring  to  the  Hindu  doctrine  of  Maya,  who  is 
supposed  to  be  the  creative  force  of  all  this  wonder- 
ful web  of  appearances  that  enwrap  the  spirit  in 
their  mesh  and  charm  the  spirit's  attention  by 
their  mystery  of  beauty  and  seeming  benevolence. 
To  the  Oriental,  as  often  to  the  man  of  the  West 
who  considers  the  character  of  this  illusion,  Maya 
assumes  the  form  of  the  eternal- feminine  unfolding 
her  allurements  before  the  masculine  looker-on. 
So  in  the  book  of  one  of  the  two  great  philosophies 
of  India  the  story  of  illusion  and  disillusion  is  told 
in  this  metaphor  of  the  stage: 

Like  as  a  danciug-girl  to  sound  of  lyres 
Delights  the  king  and  wakens  sweet  desires 

For  one  brief  hour,  and  having  shown  her  art 
With  lingering  bow  behind  the  scene  retires: 

So  o'er  the  Soul  alluring  Nature  vaunts 
Her  lyric  spell,  and  all  her  beauty  flaunts; 

And  she,  too,  in  her  time  withdrawing  leaves 
The  Watcher  to  his  peace— 't  is  all  she  wants. 

Now  have  I  seen  it  all!  the  Watcher  saith, 
And  wonders  that  the  pageant  lingereth: 

And,  He  hath  seen  me!  then  the  Other  cries, 
And  wends  her  way:  and  this  they  call  the  Death. 

And  when  the  play  is  seen,  the  illusion  dispelled, 
and  the  dancing  has  disappeared,  for  a  while  the 


ARTHUR   SYMONS  12$ 

watcher  waits  in  quiet,  seeming  to  live  the  old  life, 
as  a  potter's  wheel  revolves  a  little  space  after  the 
potter's  hand  is  still;  but  in  reality  the  desire  of 
this  world  is  ended  and  in  his  time  he  withdraws 
into  the  untroubled  peace  of  his  nature.  It  is 
called  Death;  it  is  also  called  the  Awakening.  It 
is  a  consummation  of  philosophy  not  unmixed 
with  joy,  though  it  may  seem  empty  to  most 
Western  minds.  It  is  even  in  another  way  the 
consummation  of  poetry,  for  ever  and  anon,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  true  poet  lifts  for  a  moment  the 
very  veil  of  illusion  he  is  weaving  and  shows  us 
glimpses  of  what  is  bej'ond.  And  that  is  well. 
But  suppose,  when  the  play  is  ended,  there  is  no 
wisdom  of  self-knowledge  attained,  no  spiritual 
joy  to  take  the  place  of  the  old  lust  of  the  eyes, 
no  royal  watcher  sitting  serenely  apart,  but  only 
some  poor  outcast  of  the  street,  a  brother  in 
life  to  the  painted  dancer  on  the  stage — what 
then  ? 

Now  the  story  of  such  an  illusion  and  such  an 
awakening  is  the  theme  of  the  poems  which  Mr. 
Arthur  Symons  has  recently  collected  and  pub- 
lished in  two  volumes.  In  one  group  of  these 
poems  the  parallel  to  the  Oriental  conception  of 
the  dancing-girl  is  so  marked  that  the  author 
would  almost  seem  to  have  had  the  impressing 
of  this  moral  in  his  mind  when  he  wrote  them. 
I  refer  to  The  Dance  of  the  Seven  Sins,  The  Lover 
of  the  Queen  of  Sheba,  and  The  Dance  of  the 
Daughters  of  Herodias,  in  each  of  which  the  poet 


126  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

imagines  the  allurements  of  the  world  as  dancing 
before  the  eyes  of  some  tempted  watcher. 

Is  it  the  petals  falling  from  the  rose  ? 

For  in  the  silence  I  can  hear  a  sound 

Nearer  than  my  own  heart-beat,  such  a  word 

As  roses  murmur,  blown  by  a  great  wind. 

I  see  a  pale  and  windy  multitude 

Beaten  about  the  air,  as  if  the  smoke 

Of  incense  kindled  into  visible  life 

Shadowy  and  invisible  presences; 

And,  in  the  cloudy  darkness,  I  can  see 

The  thin  white  feet  of  many  women  dancing, 

And  in  their  hands  .  .   . 

That  is  the  illusion  of  the  world  and  of  the  de- 
sires of  the  world,  daughters  of  Herodias  dancing 
before  the  grey  face  of  Herod,  And  as  they  dance 
they  sing — 

"For  are  not  we,"  they  say,  "  the  end  of  all? 
Why  should  you  look  beyond  us?  If  you  look 
Into  the  night,  you  will  find  nothing  there: 
We  also  have  gazed  often  at  the  stars. 
We,  we  alone  among  all  beautiful  things, 
We  only  are  real:  for  the  rest  are  dreams." 

But  the  watcher  grows  weary  of  the  long  mono- 
tony of  the  scene: 

Have  I  not  seen  you  as  you  are 

Always,  and  have  I  once  admired 

Your  beauty?     I  am  very  tired. 

Dancers,  I  am  more  tired  than  you. 

When  shall  the  dance  be  all  danced  through  ? 


ARTHUR   SYiMONS  12/ 

It  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom,  you  say,  the  cry  of 
the  Hindu  watcher,  "  L,o,  I  have  seen  it  all!" 
and  yet — 

Wisdom  is  weariness  to  me. 
For  wisdom,  being  attained,  but  shows 
That  all  things  are  but  shadows  cast 
On  running  water,  swiftly  past, 
And  as  the  shadow  of  the  rose 
That  withers  in  the  mirror  glassed. 

And  that  is  the  outcome — "  Wisdom  is  weari- 
ness! " 

O  bondslave,  bondslave  unto  death. 
Might  I  but  hope  that  death  should  free 
This  self  from  its  eternity! 

It  was,  3'ou  see,  a  false  illusion  that  could  lead 
only  to  a  false  awakening;  it  is  utterlj^  different 
from  the  true  illusion  such  as  hovers  over  the 
pastoral  world  of  Lycidas  and  works  throtigh  the 
magic  of  Prosper©,  and  the  awakening  from  it  is 
equally  different  from  the  disillusion  of  Shake- 
speare or  of  the  Hindu  philosopher.  The  true 
illusion  does  not  confuse  the  things  of  the  spirit 
with  the  things  of  the  world.  It  knows  that  for 
a  while  the  way  of  the  spirit  must  lie  through 
this  ari}i  Xeipic^va^  this  meadow-land  of  calamity, 
and  its  office  is  by  a  deliberate  effort  of  the  will  to 
throw  the  glamour  of  light  and  joy  and  freedom 
on  the  objects  by  the  roadside,  so  that  the  spirit 
may  journey   swiftly  and  pleasantly  to  its  own 


128  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

upland  home.  And  when  its  task  is  completed  it 
leaves  the  spirit  at  rest  with  itself,  without  regret 
or  further  craving,  filled  with  the  consummation 
of  peace  that  springs  from  experience  and  self- 
knowledge,  while  the  world  of  the  senses  remains 
in  memory  only  so  far  as  this  world  shadows  the 
spirit's  own  high  desires.  But  the  false  illusion 
is  an  inner  blindness  and  confusion;  it  is  false  be- 
cause there  enters  into  it  no  faith  in  the  joy  of 
things  unseen,  no  knowledge  even  that  such 
things  exist;  it  is  false  because  for  the  voice  of  the 
spirit  it  hears  only  the  clamorous  outcry  of  a  man's 
lower  personality  springing  from  the  desires  of 
the  body  and  the  perceptions  of  the  body,  and 
is  in  the  end  one  with  what  is  desired  and  per- 
ceived. At  the  first  this  false  illusion  is  sweet, 
but  soon  it  is  troubled  with  the  bitterness  of 
satiety;  and  the  awakening  from  it  leaves  only 
the  emptiness  of  endless  regret  and  self-torment- 
ing. The  false  disillusion  is  a  discovery  that  the 
looker-on  who  masqueraded  as  the  spirit  is  merely 
a  phantom  of  the  body;  it  is  a  perception  of  the 
hollovvness  of  the  old  illusion  without  the  power 
of  escaping  therefrom.  The  watcher  of  the  Ori- 
ental philosophers  is  one  perfectly  distinct  from 
this  "  self"  that  cries  out  to  death  for  deliver- 
ance from  its  own  eternity.  The  disillusion  of 
the  flesh  is  perhaps  the  saddest  chapter  in  human 
experience. 

Now   the   composition    of  Mr.   Symons's   two 
volumes  is  such  that  we  are  able  to  trace  the  pro- 


ARTHUR   SYMONS  129 

gress  of  his  poetic  mood  from  the  first  illusion  to 
its  consummation  in  a  false  disillusion;  and  this 
regular  gradation  we  can  follow  with  a  precision 
which  is  at  least  a  striking  proof  of  the  author's 
sincerit}'.  As  stated  in  the  prefatory  note,  these 
volumes  are  made  up  of  selections  from  five  pre- 
viously published  works,  viz.:  Days  and  Nights, 
in  1889;  Silhouettes,  in  1892;  London  Nights,  in 
1895;  Amoris  Vidima,  in  1897;  and  Images  of 
Good  ayid  Evil,  in  1899;  to  which  is  added  a 
sheaf  of  new  poems,  The  Loom  of  Dreams.  In 
one  respect  the  substance  of  these  successive  books 
is  the  same;  from  beginning  to  end  we  are  in  a 
land  of  dreams — dreams  always,  whether  fair  or 
gloomy,  or  the  haunting  remembrance  of  dreams. 
The  introductory  poem  of  the  first  book  is  a 
sonnet  that  describes  the  delicious  sense  of  drown- 
ing in  the  gulf  of  opium,  and  in  like  manner  the 
last  poem  of  all  closes  with  these  words  in  the 
mouth  of  Faustus: 

When  Helen  lived,  men  loved,  and  Helen  was: 
I  have  seen  Helen,  Helen  was  a  dream, 
I  dreamed  of  something  not  in  Helen's  eyes. 
What  shall  the  end  of  all  things  be  ?  I  wait 
Cruel  old  age,  and  kinder  death,  and  sleep. 

But  if  the  substance  of  all  these  poems  is  woven 
on  the  same  loom  of  dreams,  there  is  still,  as  I 
have  said,  a  profound  change  in  their  colour  and 
texture  as  we  proceed.  Passing  over  the  first 
book,  from  which  only  a  few  disconnected  poems 


130  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

have  been  chosen,  and  these  evidently  written  be- 
fore the  author  had  arrived  at  maturity  of  self- 
consciousness,  we  come  to  the  collection  entitled 
Silhouettes,  which  will  probably  appeal  to  the 
largest  circle  of  readers  although  they  can  hardly 
be  called  the  strongest  specimens  of  Mr.  Symons's 
work.  Yet  even  these  poems  can  never  attain  to 
any  wide  popularity,  nor  can  they  ever  have  much 
weight  with  practical  intelligences  that  shun  the 
evanescent  world  of  revery  where  the  real  and  the 
unreal  meet  and  blend  together  in  indistinguish- 
able twilight.  For  this  atmosphere  is  one  of  in- 
dulgent brooding;  their  warp  and  woof  are  of  the 
stuff  of  dreams  woven  by  a  mind  that  turns  from 
the  actual  issues  of  life  as  a  naked  body  cowers 
from  the  wind.  The  world  is  seen  through  a 
haze  of  abstraction,  glimmeringly,  as  a  landscape 
looms  misty  and  vague  through  the  falling,  flut- 
tering veil  of  the  rain.  Indeed  it  is  noteworthy, 
how  many  of  the  poems  descriptive  of  nature  or 
of  the  London  streets  are  drenched  with  rains  and 
blown  by  gusty  winds: 

The  wind  is  rising  on  the  sea, 

The  windy  white  foam-dancers  leap; 

And  the  sea  moans  uneasily, 

And  turns  to  sleep  and  cannot  sleep. 

Ridge  after  rocky  ridge  uplifts 
Wild  hands,  and  hammers  at  the  land, 
Scatters  in  liquid  dust,  and  drifts 
To  death  among  the  dusty  sand. 


ARTHUR   SYMONS  I31 

On  the  borizon's  nearing  line, 
Where  the  sky  rests,  a  visible  wall, 
Grey  in  the  ofl&ng,  I  divine 
The  sails  that  fly  before  the  squall. 

And  human  nature  is  viewed  through  a  like 
mist,  a  mist  of  tears  over  laughter,  as  it  may  look 
to  one  who  dreams  deliberately  while  the  heart  is 
young  and  the  haunting  terror  of  the  awakening 
seems  still  something  that  can  be  held  aloof  at  his 
own  sweet  will.  Love  is  the  constant  theme,  not 
the  great  passion  of  strong  men  that  smites  and 
burns  through  the  world,  but  the  lighter  play  of 
emotions  that  dally  and  wanton  over  their  own 
flowering  beauty.  And  these  women,  to  whom 
the  poet's  love  goes  out,  girls  of  the  dancing  hall 
and  the  street,  still  young  and  very  fair,  are  only 
a  Western  reading  of  that  symbol  of  nature  that 
dances  before  the  watching  soul  of  the  Orient. 
Their  faces  steal  into  the  heart  with  the  witchery 
and  insubstantiality  of  music: 

Across  the  tides  of  music,  in  the  night, 
Her  magical  face, 
A  light  upon  it  as  the  happy  light 
Of  dreams  in  some  delicious  place 
Under  the  moonlight  in  the  night. 

They  are  not  moral  and  they  are  not  immoral,  for 
they  bear  no  relation  to  the  claims  of  the  soul; 
they  are  the  figures  of  a  fleeting  illusion,  a  mere 
blossoming  of  the  flesh  yet  undefiled: 


132  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

White  girl,  your  flesh  is  lilies 

Under  a  frozen  moon, 

So  still  is 

The  rapture  of  your  swoon 

Of  whiteness,  snow  or  lilies. 

Virginal  in  revealment, 

Your  bosom's  wavering  slope, 

Concealment, 

In  fainting  heliotrope. 

Of  whitest  white's  revealment, 

Is  like  a  bed  of  lilies, 

A  jealous-guarded  row, 

Whose  will  is 

Simply  chaste  dreams:  but  oh, 

The  alluring  scent  of  lilies! 

So  new  is  the  illusion  as  yet,  so  fresh  this  vision 
of  dreams  under  the  spell  of  white  loveliness,  that 
it  passes  unscathed  through  the  fires  of  lust: 

There  with  the  women,  haggard,  painted,  and  old, 
One  fresh  bud  in  a  garland  withered  and  stale, 
She,  with  her  innocent  voice  and  her  clear  eyes,  told 
Tale  after  shameless  tale. 

And  ever  the  witching  smile,  to  her  face  beguiled, 
Paused  and  broadened,  and  broke  in  a  ripple  of  fun. 
And  the  soul  of  a  child  looked  out  of  the  eyes  of  a  child. 
Or  ever  the  tale  was  done. 

The  illusion  is  fair  and  wonderful;  it  revels  in 
sweet  fragrances  and  the  unforgettable  odours  of 
shaken  hair;  even  the  artificiality  of  this  desired 
beauty,  its  falsities  of  rouge  and  pearl-powder, 
seem  but  a  touch  of  added  spice  to  make  its 


ARTHUR   SYMONS  I33 

allurement  more  pungent.  What  though  he  who 
observes  and  translates  this  beauty  into  rhymes 
knows  that  it  is  onl}'  illusion  ?  and  what  though 
he  who  reads  and  for  a  while  surrenders  himself  to 
its  sweet  intoxication  knows  it  is  only  illusion  ? 
Because  the  watcher  in  his  real  heart  penetrates 
this  illusion  and  knows  that  it  must  so  soon  slip 
back  into  the  hideous  reality,  into  the  painted  and 
haggard  ugliness  of  the  flesh  that  is  only  flesh  and 
grows  old,  therefore  he  feels  a  greater  tenderness 
for  this  "  frail  duration  of  a  flower,"  and  a  wist- 
fulness  deeper  than  comes  to  one  who  has  some- 
thing of  his  own  spiritual  hope  to  throw  over  the 
vanishing  loveliness.  He  is  touched  by  the  fore- 
boding of  "  the  little  plaintive  smile  " — 

And  those  pathetic  eyes  of  hers; 
But  all  the  London  footlights  know 
The  little  plaintive  smile  that  stirs 
The  shadow  in  those  eyes  of  hers. 

And  joined  with  this  tenderness  for  what  must 
pass  away,  there  is  an  undercurrent  of  regret  for 
his  own  joys  that  endure  so  little  a  space;  there  is 
even  now,  while  dreams  are  the  only  reality  to 
him,  a  troublous  suspicion  rising  at  intervals  that 
the  substance  is  slipping  from  his  grasp,  and  this 
suspicion  deepens  his  regret  for  the  actual  past 
into  regret  for  the  evanescent  present  shadow  of 
things, — 

We  are  two  ghosts  that  had  their  chance  to  live, 
And  lost  it,  she  and  I. 


134  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

The  poignancy  of  this  tenderness  and  regret  is 
something  a  little  diflferent  from  the  sigh  that  runs 
through  so  much  poetry  for  passing  things;  it  is 
the  result  of  a  foreboding,  half  welcome,  half 
dreaded,  that  the  illusion  of  this  beauty  is  a 
treachery,  a  snare  set  by  some  unseen  tempter  to 
hold  a  man  from  his  true  happiness.  More  than 
once  Mr.  Symons  compares  this  illusion  to  the 
smile  of  Leonardo's  Mona  Lisa,  whose  haunted 
meaning  no  man,  unless  it  be  perhaps  Walter 
Pater,  has  ever  interpreted : 

Your  smile  is  like  a  treachery, 
A  treachery  adorable; 
So  smiles  the  siren  where  the  sea 
Sings  to  the  unforgetting  shell. 


Close  lips  that  keep  the  secret  in, 
Half  spoken  by  the  stealthy  eyes, 
Is  there  indeed  no  word  to  win. 
No  secret,  from  the  vague  replies 

Of  lips  and  lids  that  feign  to  hide 
That  which  they  feign  to  render  up  ? 
Is  there,  in  Tantalus'  dim  cup, 
The  shadow  of  water,  nought  beside  ? 

The  shadow  of  water,  indeed,  and  nothing 
more.  There  lies  the  pity  of  it  all.  Suppose  the 
thirsty  watcher  of  the  play  suddenly  becomes 
aware  that  the  pageant  is  insubstantial  shadows, 
and  that  the  cup  of  this  world's  delight  which  he 
longs  to  raise  to  his  lips  is  empty  and  holds  only 


ARTHUR   SYMONS  I35 

the  shadow  of  water — what  then  ?  And  suppose 
that  the  watcher  has  no  desire  in  his  heart  save 
this  one  desire  of  the  world's  delight — what  then  ? 
That  is  the  terrible  disillusion  of  the  flesh,  a  cruel 
mockery  of  the  true  awakening;  and  for  the  man 
on  whom  it  falls  —  as  it  must  some  day  fall  on 
every  man  of  insight,  either  the  false  disillusion  or 
the  true  awakening — there  is  nothing  left  but  the 
endless  rage  of  endeavour  to  hold  fast  an  illusion 
which  no  longer  deceives,  or  the  sullen  apathy 
of  despair,  or  the  unthinking  submission  to  his 
ever  coarsening  appetites.  You  will  hear  the  first 
note  of  this  coming  disillusion  in  the  inevitable 
cry  of  satiet)' : 

For  us  the  roses  are  scarce  sweet, 
And  scarcely  swift  the  flyiug  feet 
Where  masque  to  masque  the  moments  call; 

All  has  been  ours  that  we  desired, 
And  now  we  are  a  little  tired 
Of  the  eternal  carnival. 

With  this  word  of  weariness  we  pass  from  the 
book  of  Silhouettes  to  the  London  Nights,  pub- 
lished only  three  years  later,  and  the  change  is  as 
marked  as  it  is  significant.  On  the  light  illusion, 
the  shimmering  web  of  dreams  that  spun  them- 
selves almost  of  their  own  accord,  begins  to  fall  the 
lengthening  shadows  of  the  actual  world.  The 
transient  note  of  satiety  becomes  more  persistent, 
and  an  ever  greater  effort  of  the  will  is  required 
lest  the  fluttering  curtain  of  illusion  be   blown 


136  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

away  and  so  discover  the  naked  reality  which 
the  watcher  dreads  to  behold.  The  watcher  be- 
gins to  grow  conscious  that  he  is  himself  a  part 
of  that  nature,  weary  a  little  and  saddened  by  the 
satiety  which  must  continue — for  how  long  ? — its 
dance  of  forced  gayety. 

My  life  is  like  a  music-hall, 
Where,  in  the  impotence  of  rage, 
Chained  by  enchantment  to  my  stall, 
I  see  myself  upon  the  stage 
Dance  to  amuse  a  music-hall. 

My  very  self  that  turns  and  trips, 

Painted,  pathetically  gay. 

An  empty  song  upon  the  lips 

In  make-believe  of  holiday: 

I,  I,  this  thing  that  turns  and  trips! 

What  we  have  to  observe  now  is  this  "  im- 
potence of  rage"  spending  itself  in  the  effort  to 
preserve  the  fading  illusion,  or  at  least  to  save 
some  part  of  that  illusion's  pleasure.  To  accom- 
plish this  all  the  colours  must  be  heightened  and 
all  the  emotions  sharpened,  though  by  doing  so 
the  very  daintiness  and  subtlety  of  impressions 
which  formed  the  fascination  of  the  illusion  are 
stript  away  and  the  deprecated  end  is  hastened. 

Ah!  no  oblivion,  for  I  feel 
Your  lips  deliriously  steal 
Along  my  neck,  and  fasten  there; 
I  feel  the  perfume  of  your  hair, 


ARTHUR   SYMONS  I37 

I  feel  your  breast  that  heaves  and  dips 
Desiring  my  desirous  lips, 
And  that  ineffable  delight 
When  souls  turn  bodies     .     .     . 

Yet  even  here  we  are  far  from  the  simple  pas- 
sion of  the  flesh,  the  passion,  for  example,  of 
Catullus  for  his  Lesbia,  in  which  there  is  no  talk 
of  souls  that  turn  into  bodies  but  only  the  natural 
cry  of  a  man  of  strong  animal  appetites  and  strong 
unperverted  intellect.  The  morbidness  and  de- 
cadence of  Mr.  Symons's  verse  are  shown,  indeed, 
in  this  very  hankering  after  food  which  to  suit 
a  jaded  appetite  must  be  unwholesomely  spiced 
with  appeals  to  what  is  called  the  soul.  He 
shrinks  instinctively  from  the  outright  passion 
of  a  Catullus,  and  chooses  instead — what  ? 

"  Love  is  a  raging  fire, 
Choose  thou  content  instead; 
Thou,  the  child  of  the  dust. 
Choose  thou  a  delicate  Lust." 
"Thou  hast  chosen,"  I  said 
To  the  angel  of  pale  desire. 

In  this  same  way  he  cannot  pause  to  find  com- 
fort in  the  homely  associations  of  a  love  that  is 
less  a  passion  than  a  quiet  haven  from  the  vexa- 
tions of  life.  You  will  find  in  these  volumes 
nothing  corresponding,  for  example,  to  the  gentle 
verses  of  Tibullus  counting  up  the  treasures  of  his 
love  and  pastoral  content  while  the  morning  rain 
washes  on  the  roof.     On  the  contrary  you  will 


138  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

find  an  artificial  passion  which  requires  every 
conceivable  stimulus  to  preserve  it  from  passing 
into  sheer  disgust: 

Pallid  out  of  the  darkness,  adorably  white, 
Pale  as  the  spirit  of  rain,  with  the  night  in  her  hair, 
Ren^e  undulates,  shadow-like,  under  the  light, 
Into  the  outer  air. 

Mournful,  beautiful,  calm  with  that  vague  unrest, 
Sad  with  sensitive,  vaguely  ironical  mouth; 
Eyes  a-flame  with  the  loveliest,  deadliest 
Fire  of  passionate  youth; 

Mournful,  beautiful,  sister  of  night  and  raitt, 
Elemental,  fashioned  of  tears  and  fire. 
Ever  desiring,  ever  desired  in  vain, 
Mother  of  vain  desire. 

The  morbid  unrest  that  troubles  this  pallid  hot- 
house flower  is  the  attraction  most  of  all  sought 
by  the  watcher — anything  to  break  the  monotony 
of  the  awakening  which  to  him  is  death.  Even 
the  sense  of  shame  is  welcomed  if  only  it  will  lend 
a  little  poignancy  to  this  desire  that  grows  chill, 
if  only  it  will  for  a  moment  continue  the  illusion 
that  something  in  the  watcher  stands  apart  from 
the  play  and  is  above  it: 

I  too  have  sought  on  many  a  breast 
The  ecstasy  of  an  unrest, 
I  too  have  had  my  dreams,  and  met 
(Ah  me  !)  how  many  a  Juliet. 


ARTHUR   SYMONS  I39 

0  lost  and  wrecked,  how  long  ago, 
Out  of  the  drowning  past,  I  know 
You  come  to  call  me,  come  to  claim 
My  share  of  your  delicious  shame. 

And  shame  at  least  is  ready  at  hand.  Out  of 
this  ecstasy  of  unrest,  this  morbid  ctiriosity,  this 
terror  of  satiety,  there  does  spring  at  last  a  love 
that  is  genuine  in  its  way,  a  pale  amorphous  pas- 
sion, for  one  whom  he  calls  Bianca.  It  is  a  love 
the  telling  of  which  haunts  the  imagination  (so, 
indeed,  it  was  meant  to  do)  as  something  not  of 
this  world  or  the  other,  a  thing  unclean  not  with 
the  taint  of  the  untroubled  body,  but  of  the  body 
that  tortures  itself  maddeningly  to  escape  from  its 
own  insufficiency  and  masquerade  as  the  soul. 

So  the  simplicity  of  flesh 

Held  me  a  moment  in  its  mesh, 

Till  that  too  palled,  and  I  began 

To  find  that  man  is  mostly  man 

In  that,  his  will  being  sated,  he 

Wills  ever  new  variety. 

And  then  I  found  you,  Bianca!     Then 

1  found  in  you,  I  found  again 

That  chance  or  will  or  fate  had  brought 
The  curiosity  I  sought. 
Ambiguous  child,  whose  life  retires 
Into  the  pulse  of  those  desires 
Of  whose  endured  possession  speaks 
The  passionate  pallor  of  your  cheeks; 
Child,  in  whom  neither  good  nor  ill 
Can  sway  your  sick  and  swaying  will, 
Only  the  aching  sense  of  sex 


I40  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

Wholly  controls,  and  does  perplex, 
With  dubious  drifts  scarce  understood. 
The  shaken  currents  of  your  blood; 
It  is  your  ambiguity 
That  speaks  to  me  and  conquers  me. 

And  the  conclusion  of  the  tale  is  this — "So  Bianca 
satisfies  my  soul!  "  It  is  better  to  draw  the  veil 
of  silence  over  this  scene  of  painfully-won  illusion. 
There  are  things  it  were  good  for  a  man,  even  for 
a  decadent  poet,  not  to  have  written,  and  these 
poems  to  Bianca,  with  their  tortuous  effort  to 
find  the  soul  in  the  ambiguities  and  unclean 
curiosities  of  a  swaying  will  are  of  them.  They 
are  a  waste  of  shame. 

The  outcome  of  such  an  ' '  ecstasy  of  unrest ' '  is 
not  diflScult  to  foresee,  and  is  the  theme  of  the  two 
following  books  of  the  collection,  Afnoris  Vidima 
and  Images  of  Good  mid  Evil.  When  the  illusion 
is  dispelled,  when  the  ambiguity  is  found  to  be 
merely  a  deception  of  the  flesh  and  the  curiosity 
has  spent  itself  in  a  vain  endeavour  to  discern 
what  does  not  exist,  what  can  remain  but  the 
desolation  of  emptiness  ? 

Was  not  our  love  fatal  to  you  and  me  ? 
The  rapture  of  a  tragic  ecstasy 
Between  disaster  and  disaster,  given 
A  moment's  space,  to  be  a  hell  in  heaven  ? 

Hearken,  I  hear  a  voice,  a  voice  that  calls; 
What  shall  remain  for  him  ?  sadly  it  cries: 
Desolate  years,  eternal  memories. 


ARTHUR  SYMONS  I4I 

And  so  the  first  poems  in  this  book  which  he  calls 
A?fwns  Vidima  are  filled  with  regrets  that  at 
least  come  nearer  than  any  others  in  the  collection 
to  showing  the  agony  of  a  genuine  passion  broken 
and  defeated  by  some  infirmity  of  the  lover's  will: 

I  am  weary  of  liviug,  and  I  loug  to  be  at  rest 
From  the  sorrowful  and  immense  fatigue  of  love; 
I  have  lived  and  loved  with  a  seeking,  passionate  zest, 
And  weariness  and  defeat  are  the  end  thereof. 

I  have  lived  in  vain,  I  have  loved  in  vain,  I  have  lost 
In  the  game  of  Fate,  and  silently  I  retire; 
I  watch  the  moon  rise  over  the  sea,  a  ghost 
Of  burning  noontides,  pallid  with  spent  desire. 

But  this  sigh  of  passionate  regret  for  what 
seems  the  loss  of  a  real  happiness  is  but  a  tran- 
sient note  of  honest  self-deception.  What  follows 
is  the  bitter  cry  of  the  long  struggle,  resumed 
half-heartedly,  between  illusion  and  disillusion. 
I  do  not  wish  to  dwell  at  length  on  this  struggle, 
for  it  is  not  entirely  pleasant  reading,  however 
great  its  psychological  interest  may  be.  Through 
it  all  runs  the  memory  of  the  past,  but  a  memory 
of  shame  and  not  of  simple  regret: 

0  rapture  of  lost  days,  all  that  remains 
Is  but  this  fever  aching  in  my  veins. 

1  do  not  know  you  under  this  disguise: 
I  am  degraded  by  my  memories. 

The  thoughts  that  follow  such  memories  are  to 
the  poet  like  hideous  Harpyes, beaked  and  taloned, 


142  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

that  gather  about  him  in  the  darkness  of  his  soul. 
And  the  desires  that  torture  him  are  the  cruel 
voice  of  the  flesh  from  which  all  illusion  has  been 
torn  away,  save  the  persistent  denial  of  relief  that 
makes  of  their  disillusion  a  mere  mockery  of  the 
true  awakening: 

Ah!  in  those  shell-curved,  purple  eyelids  bent 
Towards  some  most  dolorous  accomplishment, 
And  in  the  painful  patience  of  the  mouth, 
(A  sundered  fruit  that  waits,  in  a  great  drouth, 
One  draught  of  living  water  from  the  skies) 
And  in  the  carnal  mystery  of  the  eyes. 
And  in  the  burning  pallor  of  the  cheeks; 
Voice  of  the  Flesh!  this  is  the  voice  that  speaks 
In  agony  of  spirit,  or  in  grief 
Because  desire  dare  not  desire  relief. 

In  the  ocean  of  these  degrading  memories, 
haunting  thoughts,  and  impuissant  desires,  the 
poor  soul  (let  us  call  it  soul)  of  the  poet  is  tossed 
alternately  from  the  exaltation  of  terror  to  the 
depths  of  indifferent  despair.  He  learns  at  last 
that  "  to  have  fallen  through  dreams  is  to  have 
touched  hell!  "  As  with  King  Richard  dreaming 
on  Bosworth  Field,  shadowy  images  rising  from 
what  has  been  and  clamorous  of  what  is  to  be, 
torment  him  with  a  power  greater  than  any 
reality  of  life.  The  body  and  substance  of  this 
terror  is  a  vision  of  emptiness,  of  the  dark  void, 
that  must  swallow  up  the  watcher  when  the 
growing  disillusion  is  made  complete: 


ARTHUR  SYMONS  I43 

And  something,  in  the  old  and  little  voice, 
Calls  from  so  farther  oflF  than  far  away, 
I  tremble,  hearing  it,  lest  it  draw  me  forth, 
This  flickering  self,  desiring  to  be  gone, 
Into  the  boundless  and  abrupt  abyss 
Whereat  begins  infinity,  and  there 
This  flickering  self  wander  eternally 
Among  the  soulless,  uncreated  winds 
Which  storm  against  the  barriers  of  the  world. 

It  is  not  strange  that  this  outcast  self  should  make 
the  whole  world  of  God  to  be  a  shadow  of  its  own 
mood,  and  that  this  mood  should  assume  the  like- 
ness of  insomnia : 

Who  said  the  world  is  but  a  mood 
In  the  eternal  thought  of  God? 
I  know  it,  real  though  it  seem. 
The  phantom  of  a  haschisch  dream 
In  that  insomnia  which  is  God. 

There,  I  think,  is  the  last  word  to  distinguish  this 
false  awakening  from  the  true.  From  such  an 
agony  of  insomnia  there  can  be  but  one  relief,  the 
repose  of  utter  oblivion  and  the  escape  from  self  in 
perfect  death.  Such  in  the  end  and  nothing  else 
is  the  pleading  cry  of  the  disillusioned  watcher. 

But  again  this  paroxysm  of  rebellion  spends 
itself  in  a  little  time,  and  in  its  place  comes  the 
sigh  of  lonely  indifference  and  impotence.  And  I 
know  not  which  of  these  alternating  moods  should 
remain  as  the  last  impression  of  this  tragic  his- 
tory.    "  There  are  grey  hours  when  I  drink  of 


144  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

indifference,"  he  says;  and  "  all  things  fade  Into 
the  grej^  of  a  twilight  that  covers  my  soul  with  its 
sky."  And  again:  "  The  loneliness  of  the  sea 
is  in  my  heart,  And  the  wind  is  not  more  lonely 
than  this  grey  mind."  All  the  wonted  rapture 
of  the  world  fades  into  the  grey  of  this  impotent 
listlessness: 

The  clamours  of  spring  are  the  same  old  delicate  noises. 
The  earth  renews  its  magical  youth  at  a  breath, 
And  the  whole  world  whispers  a  well-known,  secret  thing; 
And  I  hear,  but  the  meaning  has  faded  out  of  the  voices; 
Something  has  died  in  my  heart:  is  it  death  or  sleep? 
I  know  not,  but  I  have  forgotten  the  meaning  of  spring. 

Always  while  reading  these  poems,  which  are 
the  first  full  and  sincere  expression  of  decadence 
in  English,  with  their  light  and  fair  illusion  pass- 
ing gradually  into  the  terror  of  disillusion,  I  have 
heard  running  through  my  memory  three  lines  of 
old  John  Ford  which  contain  the  very  essence  of 
the  right  illusion  of  art  (for  art,  as  we  have  seen, 
has  its  true  and  necessary  illusion  of  joy  as  well  as 
this  false  illusion  of  sadness);  and  involuntarily 
these  lines  would  sound  out  as  an  echo  or  counter- 
tone  to  the  painfulness  of  Mr.  Symons's  lament. 
They  are  like  a  breath  of  fresh  air  let  into  a  murky 
chamber: 

Since  my  coming  home  I  've  found 
More  sweets  in  one  unprofitable  dream 
Than  in  my  life's  whole  pilgrimage. 

There  would  be  a  world  of  significance  in  com- 


ARTHUR   SYMONS  I45 

paring  this  "  coming  home  "  with  the  wandering 
of  that  "flickering  self"  in  the  void  places  of 
despair. 

And  yet  I  would  not  leave  the  word  despair  as 
the  last  comment  on  these  poems,  which,  no  mat- 
ter what  their  sadness  and  morbidness  may  be, 
stand  quite  apart  from  the  ordinary  versifying 
of  the  day.  They  have,  whatever  may  be  said,  a 
great  psychological  interest  for  one  who  is  curious 
to  study  the  currents  of  modern  thought.  Mr. 
Symons  impresses  us  as  being  absolutely  sincere, 
as  being  the  only  genuine  and  adequate  repre- 
sentative in  English  of  that  widespread  condition 
which  we  call  decadence.  And  sincerity  in  verse 
is  a  quality  of  inestimable  value.  But  more  than 
that:  these  poems  are  now  and  again  so  instinct 
with  original  perception  of  beauty  and  so  lilted 
with  cadences  of  sweetness,  as  to  be  remarkable 
in  themselves  apart  from  their  psychological  in- 
terest. Toward  the  end  of  the  second  volume, 
and  in  the  little  book  of  recent  poems  that  close 
the  collection,  there  forces  its  way  at  times, 
through  the  turbulent  cries  of  dull  desires  and 
stinging  regrets,  a  recurrent  note  of  the  first 
simple  delight  in  nature,  —  a  note  which  one 
would  gladly  accept  as  prophetic  of  a  new  life  to 
arise  out  of  the  tragedy  of  despair.  The  repose 
for  which  the  poet  sighs  in  this  last  poem  I 
would  quote,  is  at  least  a  better  and  more  whole- 
some thing  than  the  impious  oblivion  of  his  earlier 
craving: 


14^  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

RKST 

The  peace  of  a  wandering  sky, 

Silence,  only  the  cry 

Of  the  crickets,  suddenly  still, 

A  bee  on  the  window-sill, 

A  bird's  wing,  rushing  and  soft, 

Three  flails  that  tramp  in  the  loft, 

Summer  murmuring 

Some  sweet,  slumberous  thing, 

Half  asleep;  but  thou,  cease, 

Heart,  to  hunger  for  peace, 

Or,  if  thou  must  find  rest. 

Cease  to  beat  in  my  breast. 


THE  EPIC  OF  IRELAND 

In  his  preface  to  Lady  Gregory's  Cuchulain  of 
Muirthemne ,'^  Mr.  Yeats,  her  good  friend,  calls  it 
"  the  best  book  that  has  ever  come  out  of  Ireland; 
for,"  as  he  says,  "  the  stories  it  tells  are  a  chief 
part  of  Ireland's  gift  to  the  imagination  of  the 
world."  Mr.  Yeats  is  one  of  the  known  prophets 
of  the  Gaelic  revival,  and  his  eulogy  may  be  sus- 
pected of  the  customary  national  exaggeration; 
yet  to  one  who  comes  to  Lady  Gregory's  work 
from  the  outside  as  a  lover  of  beautiful  words 
wherever  he  may  find  them,  and  who  brings  with 
him  only  sufiBcient  sympathy  with  things  Irish  to 
understand  their  spirit,  he  trusts,  without  suffer- 

'  It  is  an  unfortunate  drawback  to  the  enjoyment  of 
old  Irish  literature  that  the  spelling  of  the  proper  names 
gives  but  the  slightest  inkling  of  their  pronunciation. 
The  pronunciation  commonly  adopted  is  a  middle  form 
between  the  oldest  variety,  no  doubt  indicated  by  the 
ancient  spelling,  and  the  modern  variety  which,  for  many 
of  the  names,  is  wanting  altogether.  Thus  the  name  of 
the  king  is  spelled  Conchubar  and  was  probably  pro- 
nounced, originally,  something  like  K6n-chovar.  The 
middle  form  employed  in  reading  the  romances  is  K6n-a- 
chur,  while  the  modern  form  is  Conor.  I  give  a  table 
of  the  pronunciation  of  the  names  occurring  iu  this  arti- 

147 


148  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

ing  a  perversion  of  judgment,  this  praise  will 
sound,  not  too  enthusiastic,  but  too  narrow.  He 
would  prefer  to  hear  simply  that  the  Cuchulain  is 
one  of  the  great  books  of  the  world, — a  greater 
book  than  many  are  likely  to  comprehend  until 
its  themes  have  been  caught  up  and  adopted  into 
the  body  of  English  literature.  I  know  well 
enough  that  the  public  of  the  present  day  is  prone 
to  accept  the  ephemeral  clever  books  and  to  ignore 
the  true  books,  and  yet  I  have  been  surprised  to 
see  how  little  the  press  in  America  has  had  to  say 
of  these  stories,  and  how  little,  comparatively, 
they  have  been  read, — I  say  "  in  America,"  for  I 
believe  that  in  England  they  have  excited  rather 
more  comment.  Even  if  the  prosaic  Saxon  is  ab- 
sorbed in  reading  the  latest  novel  and  the  latest 
treatise  on  economics,  one  might  suppose  that 
every  educated  wanderer  from  Erin  would  be 
quick  to  welcome  these  superb  legends  of  his  old 

cle,  premising  that  the  vowels  have  the  Italian  sound:  a 

as  in  father,  e  as  in  great,  i  as  in  machine,  o  as  in  note 

or  not,  u  as  in  rule  or  full;  ch  is  almost  like  k. 

Cuchulain  of  Muirthemne  (Ku-chii-lin  of  Mur-hev-na) 

Tain  Bo  Cuailgne  (tdun  bo  chuln-ya) 

Ailell  (al-yel)  Deirdre  (der-dra) 

Euier  (em-ir)  Levarcham  (la-var-cham) 

Conchubar  (Kon-a-chur)  Maeve  (mev) 

Gae  Bulg  (ge'bulg)  Scathach  (ska-ha) 

Cathbad  (kSi-fa)  Usnach  (us-ua) 

Naoise  (ni-sha)  Cruachan  ^kru-a-chan) 

Ferdiad  (fer-di'a)  Sidhe  (shi). 

Vindabair  (finn-a-var) 


THE   EPIC   OF   IRELAND  I49 

home,  but  there  is  no  sign  that  such  is  the  case, 
I  fear  it  is  even  necessary  to  explain  somewhat 
exphcitly  who  this  forgotten  Cuchulain  was,  "this 
name  to  be  put  in  songs,"  and  what  these  epic 
tales  of  Ireland  are. 

Though  the  language  Lady  Gregory  employs 
is  the  quaint  vernacular  English  of  modern  Ire- 
land, the  substance  of  her  book  goes  back  to  the 
heroic  days  of  the  land, —  to  the  seventh  and 
eighth  centuries  of  our  era  when  Ireland,  partly 
on  account  of  her  isolation  from  the  tumultuous 
changes  of  the  continent,  blossomed  out,  just  be- 
fore the  terrible  coming  of  the  Norsemen,  into  a 
civilisation  of  rare  and  passionate  beauty.  This 
island  of  the  far  western  seas  was  in  those  years 
the  sacred  repository  of  the  learning  saved  from 
the  classic  past,  and  boasted  to  be  the  teacher  of 
Europe.  But  besides  this  borrowed  culture  of 
Rome,  she  possessed  a  native  art  of  a  most  pe- 
culiar sort.  It  was  a  trait  of  the  Celtic  people, 
and  perhaps  to  a  special  degree  of  that  Gaelic 
branch  of  the  race  which  inhabited  Ireland,  to 
honour  the  poet  as  the  world  has  hardly  elsewhere 
seen  him  honoured.  The  bards  and  fillas  (or 
higher  poets)  formed  regular  schools  with  an 
ollav  (or  chief  poet)  at  their  head.  Their  educa- 
tion lasted  from  seven  to  twelve  years  or  even 
longer,  and  when  complete  included  the  know- 
ledge of  more  than  three  hundred  and  fifty  differ- 
ent metres.  As  for  poetical  substance,  the  ollav 
was  supposed  to  have  at  his  command  more  than 


I50  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

two  hundred  and  fifty  prime  stories  for  recitation 
and  one-  hundred  secondary  ones.  So  numerous 
were  these  bardic  reciters  that  Keating,  the  his- 
torian of  the  seventeenth  century,  reckoned  their 
number  at  one  third  of  the  men  of  the  free  clans, 
and  so  formidable  was  their  power  that  their  satire 
was  said  to  blast  its  victim  and  raise  blisters  on 
his  face. 

Out  of  this  enormous  activity  two  principal 
cycles  of  song  and  romance  shaped  themselves  in 
the  heroic  age  of  Ireland,  deriving  their  substance 
in  large  part  from  the  annals  of  the  great  families, 
but  including,  also,  confused  memories  of  an 
ancient  mythology.  One  of  these,  the  cycle  of 
Finn  and  Ossian  and  Oscar,  was  long  ago  vulgar- 
ised by  the  travesties  of  James  Macpherson;  the 
other,  the  Cuchulain  saga  of  Ulster,  though  al- 
most forgotten  until  recent  years,  is  far  the  more 
important,  both  for  the  sweetness  and  nobility  of 
the  actual  stories  and  for  their  capability  of  large 
development.  The  pivot  of  the  whole  series,  so 
to  speak,  is  the  famous  Tain  Bo  Cuailgne  or  Cattle 
Raid  of  Coolney,  which  relates  how  Ailell  and 
Maeve,  king  and  queen  of  Connaught,  made  a 
great  hosting  and  drove  back  with  them  a  magic 
brown  bull  of  Ulster.  That  would  seem  to  lend 
itself  to  a  border  ballad  rather  than  to  the  forma- 
tion of  a  true  epic;  and,  indeed,  it  must  not  be 
supposed  that  this  saga  of  Ireland  possesses  the 
stately  grandeur  or  the  achieved  harmony  we 
connect  with  the  narratives  of  Greece;   it  is,  at 


THE   EPIC   OF   IRELAND  151 

the  best,  epic  material  awaiting  the  accomplisher. 
Nevertheless,  the  deeds  of  Cuchulain,  who,  single- 
handed,  opposed  the  men  of  Connaught,  and 
above  all  engaged  in  tremendous  battle  with  his 
friend  Ferdiad,  rise  clear  out  of  the  regions  of 
mere  balladry  and,  in  my  opinion,  far  above  the 
sagas  of  Germany  and  Iceland.  About  this  cen- 
tral event  are  grouped  a  circle  of  tales  more  or  less 
closely  connected,  and  dealing  directly  or  in- 
directly with  the  fortunes  of  Cuchulain  and 
Conchubar,  who  is  related  to  Cuchulain  as  Aga- 
memnon was  to  Achilles.  The  most  beautiful  of 
these  subsidiary  tales, — so  beautiful  that  one  may 
not  hesitate  to  rank  it  among  the  few  great 
stories  of  tradition, — is  the  ever  memorable  Fate 
of  the  Sons  of  Usnach,  with  its  fateful  heroine, 
Deirdre, — Deirdre,  named  of  sorrow,  "  comelj'  be- 
yond comparison  of  all  the  women  of  the  world." 
The  manuscripts  in  which  these  tales  have  been 
preserved  are  numerous  and  date  from  the  eleventh 
century,  when  the  so-called  Book  of  the  Dun  Cow 
was  transcribed,  down  to  comparatively  recent 
times.  Many  of  the  stories  had  already  appeared 
in  excellent  literal  translations,  but  it  remained 
for  Lady  Gregory  to  make  of  them  an  ordered 
piece  of  literature.  By  selecting  the  tales  most 
closely  related  and  arranging  them  in  proper 
sequence,  she  has  produced  what  may  be  called 
roughly  the  Epic  of  Ireland.  To  be  sure,  the 
same  task  had  already  been  done — and  well  done 
in  a  way — by  Miss  Eleanor  Hull,  but  Miss  Hull's 


152  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

work  lacks  that  last  creative  touch  needed  to 
transfuse  the  various  materials  into  one  homo- 
geneous body.  This,  Lady  Gregory,  by  omit- 
ting a  little  here  and  there,  and  by  piecing 
together  from  the  manifold  forms  in  which  the 
tales  are  handed  down,  has  actually  accomplished. 
There  have  not  been  wanting  critics,  who  com- 
plain that  in  this  process  of  moulding  Lady  Gre- 
gory has  smoothed  away  the  wild,  romantic  spirit 
that  gave  the  legends  their  piquancy  and  value.  I 
confess  that,  after  a  pretty  careful  comparison  of 
Lady  Gregory's  versions  with  those  given  in 
Miss  Hull's  volume  and  elsewhere,  I  entirely  fail 
to  see  the  force  of  this  criticism.  Almost  invari- 
ably— I  cannot  quite  say  always — her  omissions 
take  away  what  is  puerile  or  unconvincingly  gro- 
tesque or  extraneous.  They  can  be  called  a  loss, 
it  seems  to  me,  only  by  the  pedant  or  the  Irish 
enthusiast.  Again,  the  additions  which  she  has 
imported  from  manuscripts  not  used  by  Miss  Hull 
or  Mr.  Whitley  Stokes  sometimes  increase  the  in- 
terest of  a  story  amazingly.  As  an  instance  of 
such  an  addition,  I  would  cite  this  exquisite  piece 
of  romance,  which  relates  how  Deirdre  was  first 
brought  to  the  notice  of  men.  Cathbad,  the 
Druid,  had  come  to  the  house  just  after  the  birth 
of  Deirdre  and  had  taken  the  child  in  his  arms 
and  foretold  the  evil  that  was  to  fall  upon  men 
through  her  loveliness.     And  this  is  what  he  said : 

"  Let  Deirdre  be  her  name;  harm  will  come  through 
her.     .     .     . 


THE    EPIC   OF   IRELAND  1 53 

"  In  your  fate,  O  beautiful  child,  are  wounds,  and  ill- 
doings,  and  shedding  of  blood. 

"  You  will  have  a  little  grave  apart  to  yourself;  you 
will  be  a  tale  of  wonder  for  ever,  Deirdre." 

So  the  young  child  is  given  to  Lavarcham,  her 
foster-mother,  to  be  brought  up  in  a  lonely  place, 
among  the  hills,  where  the  eye  of  man  shall  never 
light  on  her  fatal  dower  of  beauty.  But  here,  as 
always  in  the  realm  of  story,  the  radiant  gem 
cannot  be  concealed: 

Lavarcham,  that  had  charge  of  her,  used  to  be  giving 
Deirdre  every  knowledge  and  skill  that  she  had  herself. 
There  was  not  a  blade  of  grass  growing  from  root,  or  a 
bird  singing  in  the  wood,  or  a  star  shining  from  heaven, 
but  Deirdre  had  the  name  of  it.  But  there  was  one  thing 
she  would  not  have  her  know,  she  would  not  let  her  have 
friendship  with  any  living  person  of  the  rest  of  the  world 
outside  their  own  house. 

But  one  dark  night  of  winter,  with  black  clouds  over- 
head, a  hunter  came  walking  the  hills,  and  it  so  hap- 
pened that  he  missed  the  track  of  the  hunt,  and  lost  his 
way  and  his  comrades. 

And  a  heaviness  came  upon  him,  and  he  lay  down  on 
the  side  of  the  green  hillock  by  Deirdre's  house.  He 
was  weak  with  hunger  and  going,  and  perished  with 
cold,  and  a  deep  sleep  came  upon  him.  While  he  was 
lying  there  a  dream  came  to  the  hunter,  and  he  thought 
that  he  was  near  the  warmth  of  a  house  of  the  Sidhe, 
[or  fairy  folk  who  dwell  in  the  hills,]  and  the  Sidhe  in- 
side making  music,  and  he  called  out  in  his  dream,  "  If 
there  is  any  one  inside,  let  them  bring  me  in,  in  the 
name  of  the  Sun  and  the  Moon."  Deirdre  heard  the 
voice,  and  she  said   to  Lavarcham,  "  Mother,  mother, 


154  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

what  is  that?"     But  Lavarcham  said,   "It  is  nothing 
that  matters;  it  is  the  birds  of  the  air  gone  astray,  and 
trying  to  find  one  another.     But  let  them  go  back  to  the 
branches  of  the  wood."     Another  troubled  dream  came 
on  the  hunter,  and  he  cried  out  a  second  lime.     "What 
is  that  ?  "  asked  Deirdre  again.     "  It  is  nothing  that  mat- 
ters," said  Lavarcham.     "  The  birds  of  the  air  are  look- 
ing for  one  another;  let  them  go  past  to  the  branches  of 
the  wood."     Then  a  third  dream   came  to  the  hunter, 
and  he  cried  out  a  third  time,  if  there  was  any  one  in 
the  hill  to  let  him  in  for  the  sake  of  the  Elements,  for 
he  was  perished  with  cold  and  overcome  with  hunger. 
"Oh!  what  is  that,  Lavarcham  ?  "  said  Deirdre.    "There 
is  nothing  there  for  you  to  see,  my  child,  but  only  the 
birds  of  the  air,  and  they  lost  to  one   another,  but  let 
them  go  past  us  to  the  branches  of  the  wood.     There  is 
no   place    or   shelter    for  them   here   to-night."     "Oh, 
mother,"  said  Deirdre,  "the  bird  asked  to  come  in  for 
the  sake  of  the  Sun  and  the  Moon,  and  it  is  what  you 
yourself  told  me,  that  anything  that  is  asked  like  that, 
it  is  right  for  us  to  give  it.     If  you  will  not  let  in  the 
bird  that    is    perished    with    cold  and    overcome  with 
hunger,   I  myself  will  let  it  in."     So  Deirdre  rose  up 
and  drew  the  bolt  from  the  leaf  of  the  door,  and  let  in 
the  hunter. 

This  is  not  only  exquisite  in  itself,— purer, 
sweeter  romance  will  not  easily  be  found  though 
many  ancient  books  be  searched, — but  it  is  neces- 
sary to  the  Hhos  of  the  events,  as  an  Aristotelian 
would  say,  and  the  omission  of  it  in  Miss  Hull's 
version  leaves  the  story  maimed  of  its  fairest 
member.  It  shows  very  well,  moreover,  the 
quaint  language  Lady  Gregory  has  chosen  for  her 
translation,— the  spoken  dialect  of  her  beloved 


THE   EPIC   OF   IRELAND  I55 

Ireland,  very  simple  and  colloquial  yet  touched 
with  I  know  not  what  glamour  of  pathos  and  lyric 
passion  in  accord  with  the  old-world  romance  of 
the  legends.  To  follow  Deirdre  through  the  ad- 
ventures of  her  tragic  life;  to  tell  how  she  is 
wooed  by  Conchubar,  the  King  of  Ulster;  how 
she  avoids  the  royal  suitor  and  bestows  her  coveted 
love  upon  Naoise,  the  son  of  Usnach;  how  she 
flees  with  Naoise  and  his  two  brothers  to  Scot- 
land; how  they  are  lured  back  to  Ireland;  how 
Deirdre  on  the  wa}'  prophesies  of  the  evils  to 
come;  how  the  three  sons  of  Usnach  are  treacher- 
ously slain;  and  how  Deirdre  by  the  waves  of  the 
sea  gives  up  her  young  life  that  she  may  cheat  the 
cruel  king  of  so  much  loveliness  and  that  she  may 
not  be  parted  from  the  three  dear  sons  of  Usnach, 
• — all  this  would  be  to  transgress  the  limits  of  an 
essay;  and  is  it  not  written  out  fairly  in  the  book  ? 
I  cannot  read  this  story  of  Deirdre,  with  her  dower 
of  fatal  beauty  and  her  wild,  uncredited  prophesy- 
ings  of  woe,  without  recalling  the  two  heroines  of 
Greece,  Helen  and  Cassandra,  whose  characters 
she  seems  to  bear  strangely  blended  together;  and 
I  think  if  one  does  not  set  her  lamentations  among 
the  noblest  lyric  poems  of  the  world,  he  may  be 
certain,  as  Mr.  Yeats  says,  that  the  wine-press  of 
the  poets  has  been  trodden  for  him  in  vain. 

But  Deirdre  is  not  the  only  notable  heroine  in 
these  tales.  There  is  Emer  of  the  yellow  hair,  of 
the  fair  form,  whom  Cuchulain  took  to  wife  after 
the  long  courting  and  after  the  high  training  in 


156  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

heroism  under  Scathach,  the  mystic  woman  of 
Scotland,  there  where  he  met  Ferdiad  his  com- 
panion in  arms.  Emer,  too,  like  Deirdre,  knew 
the  toils  of  fate,  and  her  jealousy  of  Fand,  the 
woman  from  beyond  the  waves  of  the  great  sea,  is 
one  of  the  memorable  passions  of  the  book.  And, 
like  Deirdre,  she,  too,  in  the  end  sang  a  marvel- 
lous lamentation  over  the  body  of  her  fallen  lord. 
There  is  Maeve,  the  bloodthirsty  queen  of  Con- 
naught,  who  spurred  on  her  people  and  knew  no 
rest  till  she  got  for  herself  the  magic  bull  of 
Cuailgne.  And  there  is  her  daughter  Findabair, 
of  the  fair  eyebrows, — she  whose  love  was  pro- 
mised by  Maeve  to  the  many  champions  who  went 
out  to  slay  Cuchulain,  and  last  of  all  to  Ferdiad 
to  hearten  him  in  the  sad  combat.  But  always 
Findabair  cherished  in  her  breast  the  passion  she 
had  felt  for  one  dear,  murdered  suitor  who  was 
dear  also  to  the  Sidhe;  and  when  she  heard  how 
her  love  had  been  promised  to  one  champion  after 
another  and  had  caused  their  death,  then,  as  the 
story  relates,  "  her  heart  broke  with  the  shame 
and  the  pity  and  she  fell  dead,  and  they  buried 
her." 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  these 
heroines,  attractive  and  human  as  they  are,  over- 
shadow the  warriors  and  princes  and  prophetic 
Druids  who  move  through  these  scenes  of  adven- 
ture, or  that  the  clamour  and  pathos  of  woman's 
love  drown  out  the  sound  of  battle-cry  and  the 
glory  of  mighty  deeds.     StiU  the  epic  valour  of 


THE   EPIC   OF   IRELAND  1 5/ 

men  overrides  all,  the  nXta  av6pa>r,  as  it  should 
in  great  stories.  Our  interest  here,  as  Words- 
worth felt  on  hearing  the  song  of  the  Gaelic  lass, 

is  still 

For  old,  uuhappy,  far-oflf  things, 

And  battles  long  ago. 

I  am  tempted  in  this  connection  to  quote  a  little 
from  the  famous  duel  of  Cuchulain  and  Ferdiad, 
if  only  to  balance  the  softer  passages  of  Deirdre's 
solitude.  It  is  told  in  T/ie  Cattle  Raid  of  Coolney. 
The  clans  of  Ailell  and  Maeve  had  marched  into 
Ulster,  and,  owing  to  a  strange  disease  that  held 
the  other  men  of  Ulster  in  bondage,  Cuchulain 
alone  was  free  to  oppose  the  advancing  host. 
This  he  does  so  effectually  that  day  after  day  a 
selected  champion  of  Connaught  falls  at  his  hands. 
At  last,  with  the  lure  of  Findabair's  love,  Maeve 
rouses  Ferdiad,  the  old  companion  of  Cuchulain 
in  Scotland,  to  go  out  against  the  dreaded  hero. 
Thereupon  follows  the  battle  of  four  days,  with 
its  contest  of  alternating  pity  and  wrath,  and  its 
mingling  of 

All  passions  of  a  figbt  unmatched  till  then 
On  warfields  of  the  immemorial  world. 

And  this  is  how  their  fighting  and  resting  on  the 
first  day  is  told: 

So  they  began  with  their  casting  weapons,  and  they 
took  their  protecting  shields,  and  their  round-handled 
spears,  and  their  little  quill  spears,  and  their  ivory-hilted 
knives,  and  their  ivory-hafted  spears,  eight  of  each  of 


158  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

them  they  had.  and  these  were  flying  from  them  and  to 
them  like  bees  on  the  wing  on  a  fine  summer  day;  there 
was  no  cast  that  did  not  hit,  and  each  one  went  on  shoot- 
ing at  the  other  with  those  weapons  from  the  twilight  of 
the  early  morning  to  the  full  midday,  until  all  their 
weapons  were  blunted  against  the  faces  and  the  bosses  of 
the  shields.  And  as  good  as  the  throwing  was,  the  de- 
fence was  so  good  that  neither  of  them  drew  blood  from 
the  other  through  that  time. 

"Let  us  leave  these  weapons  now,  Cuchulain,"  said 
Ferdiad,  "  for  it  is  not  by  the  like  of  them  our  fight  will 
be  settled."  "Let  us  leave  them,  indeed,  if  the  time  be 
come,"  said  Cuchulain. 

They  stopped  then,  and  threw  their  darts  into  the 
hands  of  their  chariot-drivers.  "What  weapons  shall 
we  use  now,  Cuchulain?"  said  Ferdiad.  "The  choice 
of  weapons  is  yours  till  night,"  said  Cuchulain.  "Let 
us,  then,"  said  Ferdiad,  "  take  to  our  straight  spears,  with 
the  flaxen  strings  in  them."  "Let  us  now,  indeed," 
said  Cuchulain.  And  then  they  took  two  stout  shields, 
and  they  took  to  their  spears. 

Each  of  them  went  on  throwing  at  the  other  with  the 
spears  from  the  middle  of  midday  until  the  fall  of  the 
evening.  And  good  as  the  defence  was,  yet  the  throw- 
ing was  so  good  that  each  of  them  wounded  the  other  in 
that  time. 

"  Let  us  leave  this  now,"  said  Ferdiad.  "Let  us  leave 
it,  indeed,  if  the  time  has  come,"  said  Cuchulain. 

So  they  left  off,  and  they  threw  their  spears  away  from 
them  into  the  hands  of  their  chariot-drivers.  Each  of 
them  came  to  the  other  then,  and  each  put  his  hands 
round  the  neck  of  the  other,  and  gave  him  three  kisses. 
Their  horses  were  in  the  one  enclosure  that  night,  and 
their  chariot-drivers  at  the  one  fire ;  and  their  chariot- 
drivers  spread  beds  of  green  rushes  for  them,  with 
wounded  men's  pillows  on  them. 


THE  EPIC   OF  IRELAND  1 59 

So  the  battle  continued  for  three  days,  but  on 
the  fourth  day,  when  the  choice  of  weapons  came 
a  second  time  to  Cuchulain,  he  chose  the  Gae 
Bulg,  a  mystical  spear  that  no  man  could  with- 
stand, and  on  that  day  Ferdiad  knew  that  he  was 
to  die.  The  lament  of  the  victor  over  his  fallen 
friend  is  one  of  the  unforgettable  lyrics  of  the 
book.  And  "  this  thing  will  hang  over  me  for 
ever,"  he  cried  in  the  end,  "  Yesterday  he  was 
larger  than  a  mountain;  to-day  there  is  nothing 
of  him  but  a  shadow." 

I  am  aware  that  passages  of  this  kind,  when 
torn  from  their  context,  convey  very  feebly  the 
original  impression  of  the  scene.  Indeed,  the 
excellence  of  these  stories  is  not  of  the  ballad  sort 
that  can  be  transferred  to  a  page,  but  has  the  epic 
effect  that  comes  from  the  accumulation  or  gradual 
development  of  interest.  It  depends  on  plot,  in 
the  Aristotelian  sense  of  the  word,  on  events, 
that  is,  so  disposed  as  to  bring  out  heroic  traits  of 
character  and  to  lead  up  to  some  supreme  emotion. 
Now  in  so  far  as  the  Irish  legends  possess  these 
qualities  they  merely  conform  to  the  model  of  the 
great  story  wherever  and  in  whatever  language  it 
may  be  found.  But  they  do  possess,  also,  certain 
subsidiary  qualities  which  quite  distinguish  them 
from  other  literatures,  and  which  lend  them  a  pe- 
culiar interest  apart  from  plot  and  characterisation 
and  apart  from  the  universal  elements  of  humour 
and  pathos  and  passion  and  sublimity. 

And  here    I   cannot  help  regretting  that  this 


l6o  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

body  of  Gaelic  romance,  altogether  the  finest 
product  of  the  Celtic  genius,  was  unknown  to 
Renan  and  to  Matthew  Arnold  when  they  wrote 
their  respective  essays.  I  can  imagine  how  sub- 
tilely  they  would  have  drawn  out  these  subsidiary 
qualities  and  set  forth  the  distinctive  spirit  of  the 
Gael,  Renan  would  not  have  dwelt  so  strongly 
on  isolation  as  the  master  trait  of  Celtic  character: 
Matthew  Arnold  would  not,  I  think,  have  laid 
quite  the  same  emphasis  on  sentimetit;  he  would, 
perhaps,  have  laid  even  greater  stress  on  the 
word  magic,  on  the  Celtic  "  gift  of  rendering  with 
wonderful  felicity  the  magical  charm  of  nature." 
Magic  is,  indeed,  as  he  reiterates  in  his  way,  just 
the  word  for  it,  but  he  would  have  given  to  the 
term  a  meaning  fraught  with  far  more  of  human 
emotion  and  less  of  fairy  enchantment.  He  drew 
his  inferences  from  the  Mabi?iogio?t, — tales  of  the 
Cymri,  another  branch  of  the  Celtic  race,  which 
are  to  the  Gaelic  epos  as  a  child's  book  is  to  a 
man's.  He  would  have  found  in  the  prose  and 
verse  of  the  Irish  Gael  the  same  delicacy  and 
charm  of  magical  description  as  in  the  Cymric 
tales,  but  he  would  have  caught,  also,  a  deeper 
note  of  magic  power  vibrant  with  passionate 
possibilities. 

There  is  an  ancient  poem  which  tradition 
holds  to  have  been  uttered  by  Amergin,  the 
son  of  Milesius,  when,  at  the  coming  of  the 
wanderers,  he,  first  of  the  Gaels,  set  foot  on  Irish 
soil: 


THE   EPIC    OF   IRELAND  l6l 

I  am  the  wind  which  blows  o'er  the  sea ; 

I  am  the  wave  of  the  deep  ; 

I  am  the  bull  of  seven  battles ; 

I  am  the  eagle  on  the  rock  ; 

I  am  a  tear  of  the  sun  ; 

I  am  the  fairest  of  plants  ; 

I  am  a  boar  for  courage  ; 

I  am  a  salmon  in  the  water  ; 

I  am  a  lake  in  the  plain; 

I  am  the  word  of  knowledge. 

This  is  not  an  expression  of  pantheism,  as  some 
have  interpreted  it,  but  of  that  kinship  with  the 
powers  of  nature,  which  never  left  the  Gael  and 
which  rises  at  times  to  a  sense  of  magical  identi- 
fication. And  always  it  is  the  medium  of  his 
emotion.  So  when  Cuchulain  has  fought  the 
lamentable  battle  with  his  son,  who  is  unknown 
to  him  at  first  and  is  discovered  only  in  death, 
he  breaks  out  into  a  cry  of  anguish  that  is  like  an 
echo  of  the  song  of  the  first  Gael: 

"  I  am  the  father  that  killed  his  own  son,  the  fine 
green  branch;  there  is  no  hand  or  shelter  to  help  me. 

*'  /  am  a  raven  that  has  no  home;  I  am  a  boat  going 
from  wave  to  wave;  I  am  a  ship  that  has  lost  its  rudder; 
I  am  the  apple  left  on  the  tree;  it  is  little  I  thought  of 
falling  from  it;  grief  and  sorrow  will  be  with  me  from 
this  time." 

Nearness  to  nature  was  the  very  birthright  of 
the  Gael.  No  warrior  of  the  land  was  without 
this  sympathy,  not  even  the  great  Finn,  type  of 
all   warriors   in   later  times.     Dr.   Sigersou   has 


1 62  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

translated  a  hauuting  song  in  which  Ossiau,  the 
son  of  Finn,  relates  to  St.  Patrick  his  father's 
love  of  bird  and  deer  and  sighing  waters: 

The  tuneful  tumult  of  that  bird, 
The  belling  deer  on  ferny  steep; 
This  welcome  in  the  dawn  he  heard, 
These  soothed  at  eve  his  sleep. 

Dear  to  him  the  wind-loved  heath, 
The  whirr  of  wings,  the  rustling  brake; 
Dear  the  murmuring  glens  beneath, 
And  sob  of  Droma's  lake. 

And  as  man  is  bound  thus  closely  to  Nature,  so 
she  in  turn  often  assumes  a  human  likeness  that 
comes  out  in  little  touches  of  metaphor  and  per- 
sonification. When,  for  example,  one  of  the 
Ulster  men  went  out  to  explore,  his  way  of  return 
lay  across  a  river.  "  But  he  gave  a  false  leap," 
the  story  says,  "just  where  the  water  was  deepest, 
and  a  wave  laughed  over  him^  and  he  died." 

But  these  are  lesser  things.  A  more  striking 
outcome  of  this  magical  identification  (which 
passes  far  beyond  the  charm  found  by  Matthew 
Arnold  in  the  Mabinogion)  is  seen  in  what  may 
be  called  the  prophetic  or  foreboding  sympathy  of 
nature.  By  some  mystic  bond  the  waves  of  river 
and  lake,  the  wide-flowing  winds,  the  clouds,  and 
the  living  creatures  that  grow  upon  the  earth  are 
all  prescient  of  the  fate  of  the  Gael  and  give  signs 
of  what  is  to  befall  him,  so  that  he  walks  among 
them  as  through  a  world  of  riddling  adumbra- 


THE   EPIC   OF   IRELAND  163 

tions.  Thus  before  the  great  battle,  when  the 
sick  men  of  Ulster  arouse  themselves  to  meet  the 
hosting  of  Connaught,  Mac  Roth,  the  herald,  goes 
out  to  learn  tidings  of  them  for  Ailell  and  Maeve, 
' '  and  he  had  not  long  to  wait  before  he  heard  a 
noise  that  was  like  the  falling  of  the  sky,  or  the 
breaking  in  of  the  sea  over  the  land,  or  the  faUing 
of  trees  on  one  another  in  a  great  storm."  And 
this  is  the  report  he  brings  back  to  the  king  and 
queen:  "  I  thought  I  saw  a  grey  mist  far  away 
across  the  plain,  and  then  I  saw  something  like 
falling  snow,  and  then  through  the  mist  I  saw 
something  shining  like  sparks  from  a  fire,  or  like 
the  stars  on  a  very  frosty  night."  It  is  not  neces- 
sary to  remark  how  skilfully  real  appearances  are 
here  mingled  with  metaphor  and  magic  foreboding; 
for  the  cloud  was  the  dust  that  went  up  from  the 
marching  men  of  Ulster,  and  the  flakes  of  snow 
were  the  foam  flakes  from  their  champing  horses, 
and  the  stars  were  their  angry  eyes  gleaming 
under  their  helmets.  Other  passages,  more  pro- 
phetic and  less  clearly  metaphorical  than  this, 
might  be  quoted,  but  none,  perhaps,  more  charac- 
teristic of  the  Gaelic  manner.  Again,  this  mystic 
adumbration  takes  the  form  of  a  dream,  as  when 
the  High  King  Conaire  foresees  his  doom.  And 
it  is  what  he  said:  "  I  had  a  dream  in  my  sleep  a 
while  ago,  of  the  howling  of  my  dog  Oscar,  of 
wounded  men,  of  a  wind  of  terror,  of  keening  that 
overcame  laughter."  Or  again,  the  warning 
passes  still  further  beyond  the  scope  of  ordinary 


164  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

phenomena  and  becomes  a  waking  vision  of  the 
day  that  appears  with  symbolic  form.  In  this 
manner,  before  his  death,  Cuchulaiu  goes  forth 
with  Cathbad,  the  Druid,  and,  coming  to  a  ford, 
beholds  "a  young  girl,  thin  and  white-skinned 
and  having  j'ellow  hair,  washing  and  ever  wash- 
ing, and  wringing  out  clothing  that  was  stained 
crimson  red,  and  she  crying  and  keening  all  the 
time." 

Not  unrelated  to  this  kind  of  visionary  symbol- 
ism is  another  device  of  the  Irish  story-tellers 
which  forms  one  of  the  commonest  features  of 
their  art.  It  is  a  trick  that  Homer  used  to  de- 
scribe the  army  of  Greece,  and  that  Sir  Walter 
Scott  has  made  familiar  to  modern  readers  in  the 
scene  where  Rebecca  looks  out  from  the  tower  and 
relates  to  Ivanhoe  the  progress  of  the  siege.  No 
more  certain  means  is  known  to  lend  vividness 
and  human  interest  to  a  narrative,  and  our 
raco7iteu7's  have  not  been  slow  to  take  profit 
therefrom.  Now  this  rhetorical  device  was  long 
ago  employed  by  the  Gaelic  poets, —  employed  so 
freqiaently  and  with  such  mingling  of  magic 
vision  that  it  is  on  the  whole  the  most  striking 
peculiarity  of  their  art.  Not  unlike  the  simple 
manner  of  Sir  Walter  is  the  account  of  the  great 
battle  given  by  his  chariot  driver  to  Cuchulain, 
while  the  warrior  lies  wounded  after  his  duel  with 
Ferdiad;  only  hardly  in  Sir  Walter  will  you  find 
any  expression  of  passionate  regret  like  the  cry  of 
Cuchulain,  "  My  grief!   I  not  to  be  able  to  go 


THE    EPIC   OF   IRELAND  165 

among  them!"  More  symbolic  and  Gaelic  in 
spirit  is  the  scene  before  the  raid,  when  the  heroes 
of  Ulster  come  to  Cruachan,  the  stronghold  of 
Maeve,  that  the  queen  may  decide  which  of  them 
deserves  the  title  of  champion.  The  sound  of 
their  furious  driving  reaches  the  listeners  in  the 
castle,  and  then  it  was  that  "Findabair  of  the  Fair 
Eyebrows,  daughter  of  Ailell  and  Maeve,  went  up, 
for  she  had  a  bird's  sight,  to  her  sunny  parlour 
over  the  great  door  of  the  fort,  to  tell  them  what 
was  coming."  One  after  another  she  describes 
the  various  heroes  in  the  chariots  with  their  host 
of  followers.  At  last  she  beholds  Cuchulain,  and 
she  cries  out: 

"  I  see  in  the  chariot  a  dark  sad  man,  comeliest  of  the 
men  of  Ireland.  A  plaited  crimson  tunic  about  him, 
fastened  at  the  breast  with  a  brooch  of  inlaid  gold;  a 
long-sleeved  linen  cloak  on  him  with  a  white  hood  em- 
broidered with  flame-red  gold.  His  eyebrows  as  black 
as  the  blackness  of  a  spit,  seven  lights  in  his  eyes,  seven 
colours  about  his  head,  love  and  fire  in  his  look.  Across 
his  knees  there  lies  a  gold-hilted  sword,  there  is  a  blood- 
red  spear  ready  to  his  hand,  a  sharp-tempered  blade 
with  a  shaft  of  wood.  Over  his  shoulders  a  crimson 
shield  with  a  rim  of  silver,  overlaid  with  shapes  of  beasts 
in  gold." 

There  is  more  here  than  mere  description,  or  than 
the  prevailing  love  of  these  tellers  for  radiant 
many-blended  colours;  the  blood-red  spear  is  ready 
to  the  hero's  hand,  and  we  feel  the  onrushing  of 


l66  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

some  tremendous  event.  And  Maeve  in  her  mind 
knows  the  meaning  of  the  vision  and  interprets 
it:  "  Like  the  sound  of  an  angry  sea,  like  a  great 
moving  wave,  with  the  madness  of  a  wild  beast 
that  is  vexed,  he  leaps  through  his  enemies  in  the 
crash  of  battle;  they  hear  their  death  in  his  shout. 
He  heaps  deed  upon  deed,  head  upon  head;  his 
is  a  name  to  be  put  in  song." 

A  name  to  be  put  in  song!  I  come  in  truth  to 
what  lies  nearest  my  heart  in  this  attempt  to 
awaken  interest  in  a  book  of  ancient  legends.  It 
is  well  that  scholars  should  make  for  us  a  literal, 
studiously  exact  translation  of  these  tales,  like, 
for  example,  Miss  Winifred  Farraday's  Cattle 
Raid  of  Cuailgne,  lately  published  in  the  Grimm 
Library;  it  is  well,  still  better  in  my  judgment, 
that  Lady  Gregory  has  gathered  them  together 
and  wrought  them  into  something  approaching 
epic  unity;  best  of  all  will  it  be  when  these  in- 
spiring themes  have  been  absorbed  into  the  body 
of  English  literature,  and  have  given  us,  as  I 
doubt  not  they  will  give,  great  poems  that  are 
both  English  and  modern,  yet  are  pervaded  with 
that  fructifying  spirit  of  true  romance  which  it 
has  been  the  one  high  office  of  the  Celtic  peoples 
to  bestow  upon  the  world.  When  I  see  the  eager 
and  vain  search  for  substance  in  nearly  all  our  liv- 
ing poets,  their  mere  schoolgirl's  delight  in  pretty 
nature  embroidered  in  pretty  words,  or  even  Kip- 
ling's melodious  Jingoism,  I  am  amazed  that  some 
one  of  them  does  not  fall  upon  this  treasure-house 


THE   EPIC    OF    IRELAND  167 

of  unrifled  inspiration  to  write  for  us  a  new  epic, 
— a  truer  epic  than  Tennyson's  Idyls  of  the  King, 
for  he  would  not  be  seduced  into  the  sentimental- 
ism  that  clings  to  so  much  of  the  Arthurian  tra- 
dition. Here  at  his  asking  is  a  theme  to  which 
he  might  devote  all  his  genius,  a  labour  for  which 
he  might  strive,  like  Milton,  to  make  of  himself 
first  of  all  a  true  poem,  or  school  himself  iu  mani- 
fold learning  like  the  ollav  of  ancient  days. 

I  know  that  Cuchulain  and  his  achievements 
have  exercised  many  recent  poets  of  Ireland,  but 
the  right  singer  has  not  yet  arisen.  Ferguson 
was  brave  and  manly,  but  lacked  the  flower  of  art; 
Aubre}^  de  Vere  was  cultured  and  sensitiv^e,  but 
wanted  the  informing  spirit  of  originality,  so  that 
his  blank  verse  is  Miltonic  and  Tennysonian  by 
turns,  a  thing  of  shreds  and  patches.  There  is, 
to  be  sure,  the  younger  candidates  of  the  Gaelic 
revival,  but  somehow  too  much  of  their  work 
shows  the  shimmering  hues  of  decadence  rather 
than  the  strong  colours  of  life.  It  is  a  paradox, 
and  yet  I  believe  it  is  true,  that  if  ever  these 
themes  are  worked  over  and  moulded  into  the 
universal  form  of  modern  art,  it  will  be  by  Saxon 
hands  and  not  by  Celtic.  Some  fatal  weakness 
would  seem  to  adhere  to  this  gifted  race  of  the 
Celts,  some  incapacity  that  comes  on  them,  as  the 
sickness  came  on  the  men  of  Ulster  when  the  need 
was  most  urgent,  and  prevents  them  from  inherit- 
ing the  perfect  product  of  their  own  imagination. 
The  hated  Saxon  shall  lay  hold  of  their  spiritual 


l68  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

heritage  as  he  has  taken  possession  of  their  land, 
and  no  clamorous  outcry  of  patriotic  scholars  and 
of  Gaelic  leagues  shall  inhibit  him.  In  the  same 
way  it  was  the  Celt  who  originated  the  legend  of 
King  Arthur  and  his  Court,  the  fairest  creation  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  but  it  remained  for  the  French- 
man to  take  up  the  subject  and  shape  it  and 
rationalise  it  until  it  grew  to  be  the  fountain-head 
of  European  literature.  There  is  a  tradition  still 
held  among  the  Gaels  that  Finn  and  his  mighty 
comrades  are  not  dead  but  sleeping,  and  that  one 
day  they  shall  arouse  themselves  and  restore  the 
Gael  to  his  national  inheritance,  just  as  the  Welsh 
look  for  the  coming  of  King  Arthur.  It  is  related 
that  a  lonely  wanderer  in  the  hills  chanced  upon 
their  resting-place  and  saw  there  a  horn  with  the 
command  graven  on  it  that  it  should  be  blown 
three  times.  Once  he  blew,  and  the  sleepers, 
men  and  dogs,  stirred  in  their  slumber.  A 
second  time  he  blew,  and  the  warriors  rose  on 
their  elbows  and  gazed  at  him  expectantly.  But 
his  nerve  failed  him  then  and  he  fled  in  terror 
from  the  ghostly  spectacle, — with  the  cry  of  the 
prisoners  ringing  in  his  ears,  "A  thousand  curses 
on  you;  you  have  left  us  worse  than  you  found 
us  !  "  And  they  are  still  sleeping,  waiting  for  the 
bold  Saxon  who  shall  come  and  shall  wind  the 
magic  horn  the  third  time  and  not  be  afraid.  A 
dreamer  to  the  end  the  Celt  remains,  but  the 
waking  power  of  the  controlling  poet  for  ever 
eludes  him: 


THE   EPIC   OF   IRELAND  169 

Alone  among  his  kind  he  stands  alone, 
Torn  by  the  passions  of  his  own  sad  heart; 

Stoned  by  continual  wreckage  of  his  dreams, 
He  in  the  crowd  for  ever  is  apart. 


And  besides  this  inefSciency  of  the  dreamer, 
there  is  in  the  leaders  of  the  so-called  Gaelic  re- 
vival, a  spirit  which  militates  against  the  produc- 
tion of  pure  art.  One  feels  constantly  that  these 
poets  and  romancers  are  too  little  concerned  with 
literature  for  its  own  sweet  sake,  and  too  much 
bent,  as  Spenser  wrote  long  ago,  who  knew  the 
Irish  people  so  well,  on  "  the  hurt  of  the  English 
and  the  maintenance  of  their  owne  lewd  libertie." 
That  is  a  phrase — "their  owne  lewd  libertie" 
— which  expresses  admirably  the  lack  of  inner  re- 
straint, of  the  final  shaping  force,  that  made  of 
these  Cuchulain  tales,  even  in  the  heroic  days 
when  Ireland  was  capable  of  great  things,  a  col- 
lection of  epic  fragments  marvellously  shot 
through  with  lyric  beauty,  instead  of  a  completed 
work  of  art  such  as  Greece  and  Rome  were  able  to 
create.  It  is  as  if  the  poet,  with  all  his  fire  and 
insight, — poet  truly  though  he  may  have  spoken 
in  prose, — never  fully  understood  the  material  he 
was  working  in,  and  so  failed  at  the  last  to  de- 
velop what  came  to  him  as  an  initial  inspiration. 
And  this  failure  shows  itself  in  sins  both  of  com- 
mission and  omission. 

There  is,  first  of  all,  a  vein  of  childishness 
which  crops  up  too  often  just  when  the  tone 


170  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

should  be  most  serious  and  tragic.  It  is  charac- 
teristic that  in  the  original  quarrel  of  Ailell  and 
Maeve,  on  which  the  whole  central  story  of  the 
raid  hinges,  there  should  be  a  bit  of  puerile  talk 
about  a  white-horned  bull  who  had  left  Maeve's 
herd  for  Ailell' s  because  he  did  not  think  it  was 
fitting  to  be  under  the  rule  of  a  woman.  Or,  to 
mention  a  single  other  example,  in  the  very  midst 
of  the  tremendous  feats  of  Cuchulain  the  reader 
is  suddenly  shocked  out  of  his  tragic  sympathy  by 
hearing  that  the  champion  smeared  blackberries 
on  his  face  to  give  himself  the  appearance  of  a 
beard.  Not  unlike  this  childishness  is  the  recur- 
ring note  of  exaggeration  and  grotesque  super- 
naturalism;  it  is  the  magic  of  the  Celt  run  riot. 
To  compare  these  stories  with  the  Iliad, — and  not 
seldom  the  comparison  is  perfectly  legitimate, — 
the  effect  is  the  same  as  if  the  battle  of  the  gods 
and  the  incredible  events  at  the  Scamander  were 
broken  up  and  scattered  indiscriminately  through- 
out the  Trojan  war.  These  are  sins  of  commis- 
sion which  only  mean  in  the  end  that  the 
Cuchulain  saga,  with  all  its  incomparable  poetry, 
is  in  its  present  form  mediaeval  and  not  classic 
and  universal. 

And  there  are  faults  of  omission  which  tend  to 
the  same  result,  and  which  show  that  the  poet, 
despite  his  noble  inspiration,  was  never  quite 
master  of  his  theme.  They  are  errors  of  construc- 
tion chiefly,  a  failure  to  perceive  clearly  the  great 
moments  of  a  story  and  to  prepare  the  mind  of  the 


THE   EPIC   OF   IRELAND  I71 

reader  for  them  in  advance.  Thus  there  is  a  cer- 
tain resemblance  between  Cuchulain's  use  of  the 
magic  Gae  Bulg  on  the  last  day  of  the  duel  with 
Ferdiad  and  the  arming  of  Achilles  for  his  su- 
preme encounter  with  Hector;  but  mark  the  dif- 
ference. No  adequate  preparation  is  made  in  the 
Irish  tale  for  this  event;  the  very  name  of  the 
weapon  is  almost  a  surprise  to  the  reader  and  its 
form  and  nature  are  left  altogether  obscure, 
whereas  a  long  episode  in  the  Iliad  is  devoted  to 
the  making  of  Achilles's  shield.'  Again,  a  poet 
quite  sure  of  his  art  would  have  developed  the 
friendship  of  Cuchulain  and  Ferdiad  early  in  the 
narrative  and  thus  have  given  some  foreboding 
of  the  tragic  climax.  A  more  luminous  illustra- 
tion may  be  found  in  a  comparison  of  the  pro- 
phetic fate  of  the  two  heroes,  Cuchulain  and 
Achilles.  Both  are  aware  that  life  is  short  for 
them,  that  early  death  is  the  price  they  must  pay 
for  glory  among  men  and  fame  eternal  in  song. 
When  Cuchulain  is  a  boy  at  play  in  the  fields  he 
hears  Cathbad,  the  Druid,  declare  that  if  any 
young  man  should  take  arms  on  that  day  his 
name  would  be  greater  than  any  other  name  in 
Ireland,  but  his  span  of  life  would  be  brief.  And 
"  it  is  little  I  would  care,"  said  Cuchulain,  "if 

'  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  I  am  aware  of  the 
criticism  which  makes  this  episode  a  late  addition  to 
the  poem.  I  speak  of  the  Iliad  as  it  stands,  with  all  its 
inconsistencies,  still  the  most  perfectly  constructed  poem 
devised  by  man  or  men. 


172  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

my  life  were  to  last  one  day  and  one  night  only, 
so  long  as  my  name  and  the  story  of  what  I  have 
done  would  live  after  me."  That  is  well,  but 
somehow  it  is  a  little  lacking  in  emotional  con- 
tent, and  the  foreboding  of  the  hero's  death  is 
quite  forgotten  in  the  story  that  follows.  In- 
stinctively we  recall  the  scene  of  the  Greek  hero, 
sitting  in  solitude  and  brooding  over  his  destiny: 

But  Achilles  sat  far  apart  from  his  companions,  weep- 
ing, on  the  shore  of  the  grey  sea,  looking  out  over  the 
illimitable  ocean;  and  much  he  besought  his  dear  mother 
■with  outstretched  hands:  "  Mother,  since  thou  hast 
born  me  for  a  brief  and  little  life,  at  least  Zeus,  the 
Thunderer  on  high  Olympus,  should  have  bestowed 
honour  upon  me." 

And  always  throughout  the  vicissitudes  of  the 
Iliad  we  remember  what  destiny  hovers  over  the 
young  warrior.  In  the  diflferent  employment  of 
this  similar  material  one  feels  the  distinction  be- 
tween great  poetry  in  its  embryonic  state  and 
poetry  fully  wrought  out  and  achieved. 

The  same  inefficiency  penetrates  even  deeper 
into  the  Irish  genius.  In  his  study  of  The  Celtic 
Doctrine  of  Rebirth,  Mr.  Alfred  Nutt  has,  with  no 
little  acumen,  set  forth  the  likeness  of  the  early 
mythological  age  of  Ireland  to  the  period  in 
Greece  when  the  Dionysiac  cult  was  developed. 
He  finds  in  the  Sidhe,  or  fairy  folk  of  the  Gael, 
the  same  powers  of  life  and  increase  which  were 
personified  in   the   Hellenic   god  of  death  and 


THE    EPIC    OF   IRELAND  1/3 

rebirth,  of  wine  and  frenzied  ecstasy.  It  is  sig- 
nificant that  in  Ireland  these  powers  became  a 
tricky  race  whose  acts  were  inwrought  with  the 
longing  of  the  people  for  a  fair,  shadowy  other- 
world,  a  Tirnanog  or  land  of  the  always  young,  a 
heaven  of  dreams,  very  beautiful  and  winsome, 
appearing  here  and  there  in  vision  to  the  lonely 
wanderer  and  inspiring  his  lyric  joys,  but  without 
moral  intent  or  serious  influence;  whereas  from 
Dionysus  and  the  mystery  of  his  passion  sprang, 
in  Greece,  the  greatest  and  most  profoundly  moral 
drama  the  world  has  ever  seen.  Yet — and  this, 
too,  it  is  fair  to  say — Dionysus  and  the  tragedy 
of  Greece  have  passed  away,  while  the  simple 
peasant  of  Ireland  still  beholds  glimpses  of  the 
happy  Sidhe,  and  still  hears  the  voices  luring  him 
away  to  some  Land  of  Youth  that  lies  beyond  the 
hills  or  over  the  western  sea.  I  cannot  but  think 
that  the  band  of  disciples  who  are  attempting  to 
re-create  to-day  a  literature  of  Ireland  in  the  Irish 
tongue  are  seduced  by  the  same  impalpable  visions 
that  have  hovered  about  their  pathetic  land  from 
the  beginning.  In  the  day  of  his  strength  the 
Gael  prepared  for  the  world  a  body  of  inspiration, 
whose  haunting  but  imperfect  beauty  I  have  tried 
to  set  forth;  now^  the  inheritance  lies  open  to  all 
people  and  awaits  the  cunning  hand  of  the 
stranger  who  shall  make  it  his  own. 

Yet  the  honour  shall,  nevertheless,  in  a  way  be 
Ireland's.  One  poet  the  new  movement  has  pro- 
duced, Irish  in  birth  but  Saxon  and  Greek  in 


174  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

training, — Ivionel  Johnson, — whose  early  death  is 
still  lamented.  The  restrained  power  of  his  ode 
on  the  sorrows  of  Ireland  might  seem  to  justify 
the  hopes  of  the  most  extravagant  patriots,  were 
it  not  that  the  form  and  manner  of  his  writing 
show  more  of  the  Saxon  than  of  the  Gael: 

And  yet  great  spirits  ride  thy  winds:  thy  ways 

Are  haunted  and  enchaunted  evermore. 

Thy  children  hear  the  voices  of  old  days 

In  music  of  the  sea  upon  thy  shore, 

In  falling  of  the  waters  from  thine  hills, 

In  whispers  of  thy  trees: 
A  glory  from  the  things  eternal  fills 
Their  eyes,  and  at  high  noon  thy  people  sees 
Visions,  and  wonderful  is  all  the  air. 

So  upon  earth  they  share 
Kternity:  they  learn  it  at  thy  knees. 


P.  S. —  Since  the  writing  of  this  essay  Lady  Gregory 
has  completed  her  survey  of  the  Irish  Sagas  by  publish- 
ing her  Gods  and  Fighting  Men,  in  which  she  has 
brought  together  into  a  single  volume  the  Fenian  tales 
and  the  legends  concerned  with  the  settling  of  Irelaud 
and  with  the  races  of  gods.  It  must  be  admitted  that, 
from  no  fault  of  the  translator's,  the  interest  of  these 
later  tales  is  decidedly  inferior  to  that  of  the  earlier. 
There  is  nothing  like  the  same  unity  of  effect  as  in 
the  Cuchulain  saga,  and  none  of  the  individual  stories  in 
any  way  approaches  the  beauty  and  sublimity  of  The 
Fate  of  the  Sons  of  Usnach.  The  majority  of  the  tales 
are  about  the  Fenians,  and  it  is  perfectly  evident  that, 
as  Dr.  Hyde  maintains,  they  are  bits  of  mere  folklore 


THE   EPIC   OF   IRELAND  175 

which  have  been  popular  in  the  mouths  of  the  un- 
educated Irish  for  many  hundreds  of  years;  indeed,  not 
a  few  of  them  can  be  heard  in  peasant  homes  to-day. 
They  are  thus  peculiarly  exposed  to  that  looseness  of 
conception,  that  incoherence  and  failure  to  grip  the 
subject,  which  Matthew  Arnold  long  ago  pointed  out 
as  the  essential  weakness  of  the  Celtic  genius.  The 
Cuchulain  tales,  on  the  contrary,  seem  never  to  have 
enjoyed  the  same  common  popularity.  They  were  ap- 
parently the  property  of  the  great  families,  and  were 
told  for  the  benefit  of  nobles  in  the  banquet  hall,  much 
after  the  fashion  of  the  Homeric  chants.  As  a  con- 
sequence they  have  received  more  of  the  discipline  of 
the  shaping  imagination,  and  their  emotional  content 
has  been  deepened  and  concentrated.  The  Fenian  saga 
is  composed  for  the  most  part  of  curious  fairy  tales, 
wherein  the  law  of  cause  and  effect  is  entirely  forgotten 
and  the  reader  wanders  in  a  land  of  childish  surprises; 
the  Cuchulain  is  an  embryonic  epic  shot  through  with 
the  radiant  colours  of  the  "magic"  of  the  Celt. 

I  do  not  mean  to  imply  by  this  that  the  later  tales  are 
without  a  beauty  of  their  own,  but  that  this  beauty  is  of 
a  more  scattered  and  unintentional  nature.  Finn  was  the 
captain  of  a  band  of  Janissaries  (if  we  may  accept  the 
historic  explanation  of  the  legends),  who  were  called 
the  Fenians  (Fianna),  and  who  gradually  usurped  more 
and  more  power  until  under  Cormac,  High  King  of 
Ireland,  they  were  crushed  in  a  great  battle  and  put 
down.  The  stories  about  these  banded  soldiers  are  of 
endless  battles  and  brawls  and  hunting  adventures, 
wherein  demons  and  fairy  folk  and  marvellous  beasts 
and  vanishing  scenes  play  a  principal  part. 

It  is,  however,  only  fair  to  say  that  in  the  end  these 
tales  produce  a  kind  of  unity  of  impression  by  accumu- 
lated effect ;  and  the  conclusion,  which  relates  the  well- 
known  story  of  Ossian,  Finn's  son,  left  alone  of  all  the 


176  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

Fenians,  an  old  man  in  the  house  of  St.  Patrick,  lament- 
ing the  decay  of  the  bright  pagan  world  and  the  gloom 
of  the  new  monkish  faith,  has  a  touch  of  genuine  sub^ 
limity.  When  the  saint  bids  him  cry  to  God  for  mercy, 
the  stalwart  heathen  can  only  speak  of  his  dear  re- 
gretted joys :  "  My  story  is  sorrowful.  The  sound  of 
your  voice  is  not  pleasant  to  me.  I  will  cry  my  fill,  but 
not  for  God,  but  because  Finn  and  the  Fianna  are  not 
living."  And  again,  quaintly;  "  Without  the  cry  of  the 
hounds  or  the  horns,  without  guarding  coasts,  without 
courting  generous  women;  for  all  that  I  have  suffered 
by  the  want  of  food,  I  forgive  the  King  of  Heaven  in 
my  will." 


TWO  POETS  OF  THE  IRISH  MOVEMENT 

If  one  were  to  ask  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats  what  he 
considered  the  chief  characteristic  of  the  move- 
ment he  so  ably  represents,  no  doubt  the  last 
word  to  come  to  him  would  be  defeat,  and  yet,  if 
properly  considered,  this  so-called  Gaelic  Revival, 
this  endeavour  to  resuscitate  a  bygone  past  and 
to  temper  the  needs  of  the  present  to  outworn 
emotions,  is,  when  all  is  said,  just  that  and  no- 
thing more — a  movement  of  defeat.  I  say  this 
with  some  confidence,  because  the  visit  of  Mr. 
Yeats  among  us,  to  lecture  as  a  guest  of  the  Irish 
Literary  Society,  has  led  me  to  look  through  his 
successive  volumes  systematically,  and  I  have 
been  more  than  ever  impressed  by  the  gradual  de- 
velopment in  them  of  a  sense  of  failure  and  decay 
rather  than  of  mastery  and  growth.  And  the  im- 
pression has  saddened  me  a  little;  for  I  confess  to 
have  become  somewhat  wearied  by  the  imperial- 
istic arrogance  of  Kipling  the  great  and  the  lesser 
Kiplings,  and  to  have  been  ready  to  welcome  the 
gentler  Muse  of  the  Irish  poets  who  are  so  often 
contrasted  with  him.  I  had  expected,  indeed, 
"  to  hear  a  voice  of  lamentation  out  of  the  Golden 
Age,"  but  what  really  came  to  my  ears  was  more 
177 


178  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

like  an  imitation  of  the  bewildered  wailings  of 
decadence  which  ruled  lately  in  France  and  which 
has  swept  with  it  not  a  few  Englishmen  such  as 
Mr.  Arthur  Symons.  Nothing  can  be  further 
from  the  virile  passion  and  pathos,  the  action  and 
interknitting  of  strong  characters  in  the  ancient 
Irish  literature,  than  this  modern  "  Celtic  phan- 
tasmagoria," to  use  Mr.  Yeats' s  own  words, 
"  whose  meaning  no  man  has  discovered,  nor 
any  angel  revealed."  I  read  the  tremendous 
story  of  Deirdre  in  Lady  Gregory's  version  of  the 
Irish  saga  of  Cuchulain,  and  I  am  filled  with  the 
sorrow  of  her  lamentation  as  with  one  of  the  un- 
forgettable sorrows  of  the  world: 

"  I  am  Deirdre  without  gladness,  and  I  at  the  end  of  my 
life;  since  it  is  grief  to  be  without  them,  I  myself  will 
not  be  long  after  them." 

After  that  complaint  Deirdre  loosed  her  hair,  and  threw 
herself  on  the  body  of  Naoise  before  it  was  put  in  the 
grave  and  gave  three  kisses  to  him,  and  when  her  mouth 
touched  his  blood,  the  colour  of  burning  sods  came  into 
her  cheeks,  and  she  rose  up  like  one  that  had  lost  her 
wits,  and  she  went  through  the  night  till  she  came  to 
where  the  waves  were  breaking  on  the  strand.  And  a 
fisherman  was  there  and  his  wife,  and  they  brought  her 
into  their  cabin  and  sheltered  her,  and  she  neither  smiled 
nor  laughed,  nor  took  food,  drink,  or  sleep,  nor  raised 
her  head  from  her  knees,  but  crying  always  after  the  sons 
of  Usnach. 

I  read  this  noble  adaptation  of  old  Irish  passion, 
and  then  turn  to  Mr.  Yeats,  who  attempts  to  ex- 
press "  the  stir  and  tumult  of  defeated  dreams  " 


THE   IRISH    MOVEMENT  179 

through  the  mouths  of  these  same  heroes  of 
ancieut  song,  and  this,  for  an  example,  is  what  I 
find: 

Were  you  but  Ij'ing  cold  and  dead, 
And  lights  were  paling  out  of  the  West, 
You  would  come  hither,  and  bend  your  head, 
And  I  would  lay  my  head  on  your  breast; 
And  you  would  murmur  tender  words. 
Forgiving  me  because  you  were  dead; 
Nor  would  you  rise  and  hasten  away, 
Though  you  have  the  will  of  the  wild  birds, 
But  know  your  hair  was  bound  and  wound 
About  the  stars  and  moon  and  sun. 

Mr.  Yeats  has  somewhere  defined  certain  poems 
as  an  endeavour  "  to  capture  some  high,  impal- 
pable mood  in  a  net  of  obscure  images,"  and  no 
little  part  of  his  own  verse  might  fall  under  the 
same  definition.  Too  often  he  appears  to  strive 
after  an  exalted  mysticism  by  giving  the  reins  to 
loose  revery,  seeming,  indeed,  not  to  recognise 
any  distinction  between  these  two  states  of  mind. 
The  long  tradition  of  defeat  that  overshadows  his 
country  has  turned  him,  together  with  most  of 
the  other  singers  of  a  New  Ireland,  away  from 
the  cruel  realities  of  their  world  and  from  the 
simple  passions  that  control  the  impulsive  ener- 
gies of  men  into  this  Celtic  twilight  of  defeated 
dreams.  In  the  silence  of  this  retreat  from  the 
world,  in  the  hush  that  falls  after  the  thunder  and 
tumtilt  of  the  passing  war  gods,  one  might  look 
to   hear   the   still   small   voice   of    that    genuine 


l8o  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

mysticism  which,  alone  of  all  poetic  moods,  has 
scarcely  come  to  utterance  in  English  poetry.  This 
would  seem  to  be  the  true  field  for  these  poets  who 
are  so  open  to  impressions  of  patriotism  and 
whose  native  land,  dear  in  innumerable  ways,  has 
suffered  so  many  a  sad  eclipse.  Something  of 
this  higher  mysticism  was,  perhaps,  heard  in  Mr. 
Yeats' s  earlier  poems,  but  no  one  can  read  his 
more  recent  productions  without  observing  what 
may  be  called  a  defalcation  of  the  mind.  Instead 
of  the  true  voice  of  the  spirit,  we  hear  the  chatter- 
ing of  old  women  whose  memory  is  troubled  by 
vague  and  foolish  superstitions;  we  perceive  a 
poet  of  undoubted  powers  lending  himself  to  the 
mystery  mongering  of  a  circle  of  morbid  clerks; 
we  listen  to  the  revelations  of  wandering  beggars 
and  workhouse  paupers  as  if  they  were  apocalyp- 
tic in  origin;  we  find  a  man  gone  out  among  the 
hills  to  track  "every  old  dream  that  has  been 
strong  enough  to  fling  the  weight  of  the  world 
from  its  shoulders,"  and  we  get  from  him  idle 
ghost  stories  and  babbling  repetitions  of  old  wives' 
tales.  To  me,  at  least,  it  is  all  rather  sad,  for  I 
should  be  so  willing  to  accept  this  vaunted  sym- 
bolism as  a  true  message  from  one  who  has  beheld 
the  vision.  Is  it  too  much  to  say  that  this  is  the 
poetry  of  defeat?  The  "  fret,"  to  use  an  expres- 
sive Irish  word,  is  over  him,  and  too  long  brood- 
ing on  the  sorrow  of  the  land  has  brought  him 
to  a  state  perilously  like  an  absconding  of  the 
intellect. 


THE   IRISH    MOVEMENT  l8l 

Were  it  not  that  Mr.  Yeats  stands  as  the  leader 
of  a  group  of  young  poets  who  show  undoubted 
talent  and  who  have  just  cause  for  attempting  to 
form  a  school  of  poetry  somewhat  apart  from  the 
main  current  of  English  literature,  there  would  be 
no  reason  for  taking  his  delinquencies  seriously. 
As  it  is,  one  resents  this  flaccid  note  in  what  might 
otherwise  be  a  concord  of  subtle  and  exquisite 
music.  As  I  have  said,  the  real  kinship  of  Mr. 
Yeats' s  present  style  is  with  that  of  Arthur 
Symons,  himself  a  disciple  of  the  French  de- 
cadents; only  one  must  add  in  justice  that  no 
taint  of  moral  degeneration  has  appeared  in  the 
Irish  writer — and  that  is  much  to  concede  to  a 
decadent.  It  would  be  easy  to  set  forth  this  kin- 
ship by  parallel  quotations;  to  show,  for  instance, 
how  in  both  writers  the  looseness  of  ideas  betrays 
itself  unmistakably  in  a  curious  uncertainty  of 
rhythm,  wherein  the  accents  hover  weakly  and 
dissolve  into  a  fluttering  movement  utterly  differ- 
ent from  the  marching  order  of  the  strong  poets. 
There  is  one  trick  of  both  (though  it  is  much 
more  marked  in  Mr.  Yeats)  which  may  seem 
trivial,  and  yet  does  in  some  way  connect  itself 
with  the  total  impression  of  their  art.  This  is  an 
insistence  on  the  hair  in  describing  women.  Just 
why  this  habit  should  smack  of  decadence,  is  not 
quite  clear  to  me,  but  the  feeling  it  inspires  is  un- 
mistakable. Out  of  curiosity  I  counted  the  num- 
ber of  allusions  to  hair  in  the  few  poems  that 
make   up   Mr.   Yeats' s   IVhid  amo7ig  the  Reeds, 


I82  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

and  found  the}-  mounted  up  to  twenty- three.  It 
is  "  the  long  dim  hair  of  Bridget,"  or  "  the 
shadowy  blossom  of  my  hair,"  or  "  passion- 
dimmed  eyes  and  long  heavy  hair,"  or  "a 
flutter  of  flower-like  hair,"  or  "  dim  heavy 
hair,"  or  the  command  to  "  close  your  eyelids, 
loosen  your  hair."  There  is  a  fragile  beauty 
in  these  expressions,  no  doubt,  but  withal  some- 
thing troubling  and  unwholesome ;  one  thinks 
of  the  less  chaste  descriptions  of  Arthur  Syraons 
or  the  morbid  women  of  Aubrey  Beardsley's 
pencil  rather  than  of  the  strong  ruddy  heroines 
of  old  Irish  story.  The  trait  is  significant  of 
much. 

Yet  I  would  not  be  held  to  deny  the  loveliness 
of  many  of  Mr.  Yeats' s  poems;  above  all  I  have 
respect  for  the  pure  patriotism  that  burns  through 
his  language  like  a  clear  flame  within  a  vase  of 
thinly  chiselled  alabaster,  although  I  believe  that 
tlie  specific  aims  of  the  Gaelic  enthusiasts  are 
tragically  misdirected.  It  may  even  be  the  half- 
avowed  consciousness  of  this  fatal  mistake  that 
has  so  emphasised  the  note  of  defeat  in  their  verse. 
At  times  this  patriotic  fervour  enables  Mr.  Yeats 
to  catch  the  old  haunting  magic  that  Matthew 
Arnold  marked  as  the  chief  characteristic  of  Celtic 
literature.  So  in  one  of  his  earlier  poems  he  pic- 
tures the  supernatural  creatures  that  troubled  the 
men  who  were  digging  into  the  hill  of  the  Sidhe 
folk,  and  his  words  might  stand  with  the  best  of 
such  passages  in  the  Cuchdain  : 


THE   IRISH    MOVEMENT  183 

At  middle  night  great  cats  with  silver  claws, 
Bodies  of  shadow,  and  blind  e3'es  like  pearls 
Came  up  out  of  the  hole,  and  red-eared  hounds 
With  long  white  bodies  came  out  of  the  air 
Suddenly,  and  ran  at  them  and  harried  them. 

One  does  not  soon  forget  those  "blind  e5^es  like 
pearls."  Elsewhere  Mr.  Yeats  seems  to  be  aware 
that  the  wanton  re  very  of  his  muse  may  cut  him 
ofiF  from  the  fellowship  of  the  "  great  legion  of 
Ireland's  martyr  roll ": 

Know  that  I  would  accounted  be 
True  brother  of  that  Company, 
Who  sang  to  sweeten  Ireland's  wrong, 
Ballad  and  story,  rann  and  song. 

Nor  may  I  less  be  counted  one 

With  Davis,  Mangan,  Ferguson, 

Because  to  him  who  ponders  well. 

My  rhymes  more  than  their  rhyming  tell 

Of  the  dim  wisdoms  old  and  deep, 

That  God  gives  unto  man  in  sleep. 

For  the  elemental  beings  go 

About  my  table  to  and  fro. 

In  flood  and  fire  and  clay  and  wind, 

They  huddle  from  man's  pondering  mind; 

Yet  he  who  treads  in  austere  ways 

May  surely  meet  their  ancient  gaze. 

If  this  is  the  poetry  of  defeat,  it  still  retains  a 
vision  of  pure  beauty  that  is  not  without  a  mes- 
sage for  those  whose  ears  ring  with  the  din  of 
loud  materialistic  songs.  Nay,  I  am  not  prepared 
to  say  that  the  poet  of  failure   has  not  his  own 


l84  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

place  in  the  chorus  that  clieers  and  soothes  us 
when,  at  rare  intervals  perhaps,  we  seek  the  con- 
solation of  verse.  How  few  of  us  there  are  who 
do  not  feel  at  times  the  wan  lethargy  of  defeat 
steal  upon  us!  It  is  not  easy  amid  the  sordid  busi- 
ness of  life,  even  amid  the  strong  calls  of  generous 
action  when  these  are  heard,  to  pay  heed  to  the 
still  small  voice;  and  in  our  moods  of  dejection 
there  may  perchance  be  some  kinship  to  spiritual 
things  in  this  feeling  of  defeat,  in  this  surrender 
to  the  vague  fleeting  shadows  that  tremble  on  the 
inner  e5^e.  The  sadness  of  these  poems  of  Ireland 
is  justified  to  us  then,  and  we  recall  the  stanzas 
of  another  poet,  "  in  his  misery  dead,"  composed 
on  the  theme  of  that  strange  phrase,  "  To  weep 
Irish": 

The  sadness  of  all  beauty  at  the  heart, 
The  appealing  of  all  souls  unto  the  skies. 
The  longing  locked  in  each  man's  breast  apart, 
Weep  in  the  melody  of  thine  old  cries. 

Mother  of  tears !  sweet  Mother  of  sad  sighs  ! 
All  mourners  of  the  world  weep  Irish,  weep 
Ever  with  thee;  while  burdened  time  still  runs, 
Sorrows  reach  God  through  thee,  and  ask  for  sleep. 

And  though  thine  own  unsleeping  sorrow  yet 
Live  to  the  end  of  burdened  time,  in  pain; 
Still  sing  the  song  of  sorrow  !  and  forget 
The  sorrow,  in  the  solace,  of  the  strain. 

Ijonel  Johnson,  too,  wrote  with  the  sorrow  of 
Ireland  constantly  in  his  heart,  and  he  may  be 


THE    IRISH    MOVEMENT  185 

called,  in  one  sense,  like  most  of  the  writers  of 
this  school,  a  poet  of  failure;  but  out  of  this  defeat 
he  won  a  firm  station  of  the  spirit,  as  may  be  seen 
in  the  verses  just  quoted,  very  different  from  the 
hazy  dreamland  of  Mr.  Yeats.  His  is  the  uplifted 
courage  of  Milton: 

What  though  the  field  be  lost? 
All  is  not  lost ;  the  unconquerable  will,     .     .     . 
And  what  is  else  not  to  be  overcome. 

Mr.  Johnson's  death  last  year  (1902),  at  the  early 
age  of  thirty-five,  was  an  irreparable  loss  to  mod- 
ern English  literature,  and  took  away  from  the 
li  ttle  band  of  Gaelic  enthusiasts  the  one  writer  who 
held  his  genius  in  perfect  control.  There  is  some- 
thing pathetically  aloof  in  the  fragmentary  story 
of  his  life  as  it  reaches  us  through  his  friends.  He 
was  of  Irish  birth,  but  received  his  education  at 
Winchester  and  Oxford,  coming  in  his  university 
years  much  under  the  influence  of  Pater.  After 
his  college  days  he  resided  chiefly  in  London, 
writing  an  occasional  article  of  criticism  and  send- 
ing forth  at  intervals  a  poem  of  refined  and 
scholarly  taste.  There  was  a  notable  delicacy, 
even  sanctity,  in  his  character,  and  "  a  seal  upon 
him  as  of  something  priestly  and  monastic."  Al- 
ways, indeed,  whether  at  his  chambers  in  Clif- 
ford's Inn  or  elsewhere,  he  avoided  the  tumult  of 
many  people — though  he  loved  L,ondon  strangely 
— and  lived  the  life  almost  of  a  recluse.  Yet  his 
warmth  of  affection  for  his  friends  never  waned, 


l86  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

and  thej''  in  return  reverenced  the  zeal  and  purity 
of  his  intellectual  aims  as  if  he  were  a  man  set 
apart  from  the  common  familiarities  of  society. 
He  wrote  nobl}^  of  friendship,  linking  it  with  his 
most  sacred  aspirations: 

Each  friend  possesses,  each  betrays, 
Some  secret  of  the  eternal  things; 
Each  one  has  walked  celestial  ways, 
And  held  celestial  communings. 

And  another  poem,  composed  in  his  newly  won 
religious  fervour — for  he  became  in  early  manhood 
a  devout  convert  to  the  Roman  Church — sanctifies 
friendship  almost  as  if  it  were  a  sacrament  of  the 
faith: 

A  FRIEND 

His  are  the  whitenesses  of  soul, 

That  Virgil  had;  he  walks  the  earth 

A  classic  saint,  in  self-control, 
And  comeliness,  and  quiet  mirth. 

His  presence  wins  me  to  repose; 

When  he  is  with  me,  I  forget 
All  heaviness;  and  when  he  goes. 

The  comfort  of  the  sun  is  set. 

But  in  the  lonely  hours  I  learn, 

How  I  can  serve  and  thank  him  best; 

God  !  trouble  him;  that  he  may  turn 
Through  sorrow  to  the  only  rest. 

He  himself  had  something  in  him  of  the  classic 
saint.     His  intellect  was  trained  in  the  learning 


THE   IRISH    MOVEMENT  1 8/ 

of  Greece  and  Rome,  and  possessed  the  firmness 
and  wholesome  clearness  that  we  associate  with 
the  word  classic.  But  his  body  is  described  as 
being,  "  elfin  small  and  light,"  like  De  Quincey's, 
and  again  as  "  fragile  and  terribly  nervous." 
Those  who  care  to  read  more  of  the  short  tragedy 
of  his  life,  with  its  pathetic  secret,  and  of  his 
death,  may  find  it  told  in  The  MoJiih,  by  Miss 
Guiney  in  her  sympathetic  manner.  It  is  one  of 
the  pitiably  sad  and  still  heroic  chapters  of  our 
literary  annals.  "With  all  his  deference,"  writes 
Miss  Guiney,  "  his  dominant  compassion,  his 
grasp  of  the  spiritual  and  the  unseen,  his  feet 
stood  foursquare  upon  rock.  He  was  a  tower  of 
wholesomeness  in  the  decadence  which  his  short 
life  spanned.  He  was  no  pedant  and  no  prig. 
Hesitations  are  gracious  when  they  are  unaffected, 
but  thanks  are  due  for  the  one  among  gentler 
critics  of  our  passing  hour  who  cared  little  to 
'publish  his  wistfulness  abroad.'  "  There  lies  the 
difference.  From  the  wistfulness,  I  had  almost 
said  the  sickhness,  of  Mr.  Yeats  who  seeks  relief 
in  wasteful  revery,  we  pass  to  the  sternly  idealised 
sorrow  of  Lionel  Johnson,  well  knit  with  intel- 
lectual fibre,  and  we  understand  that  imperious 
victory  in  defeat  which  Milton  personified  in  his 
Satan,  thinking  more  of  his  own  state,  one  feels, 
than  of  the  fallen  angel;  we  are  made  aware  for 
the  moment  of  that  hidden  spirit  within  us  which 
triumphs  in  failure — the  unconquerable  will,  and 
what  is  else  not  to  be  overcome.     It  is  good  to 


l88  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

read  such  poetry;  there  is  a  fountain  in  it  of  con- 
solation— and  which  of  us  in  our  passage  through 
the  world  does  not  need  consolation? — and  we 
drink  from  it  the  refreshment  of  a  great  courage. 
If  I  were  asked  to  name  the  ode  written  in  recent 
years  which  exhibits  the  whitest  heat  of  poetical 
emotion  expressed  in  language  of  the  most  perfect 
and  classical  restraint,  which  conforms  most 
nearly  to  the  great  models  of  old,  I  should  with- 
out hesitation  name  Mr.  Johnson's  Ireland.  Even 
in  detached  stanzas  the  beauty  of  the  poem  car 
not  be  entirely  lost: 

Thy  sorrow  and  the  sorrow  of  the  sea 
Are  sisters;  the  sad  winds  are  of  thy  race; 
The  heart  of  melancholy  beats  in  thee, 
And  the  lamenting  spirit  haunts  thy  face, 
Mournful  and  mighty  Mother  !  who  art  kin 

To  the  ancient  earth's  first  woe, 
When  holy  Angels  wept,  beholding  sin. 
For  not  in  penance  do  thy  true  tears  flow, 
Not  thine  the  long  transgression;  at  thy  name 

We  sorrow  not  with  shame, 
But  proudly;  for  thy  soul  is  white  as  snow. 


Proud  and  sweet  habitation  of  thy  dead  ! 
Throne  upon  throne,  its  thrones  of  sorrow  filled:. 
Prince  on  prince  coming  with  triumphant  tread. 
All  passion,  save  the  love  of  Ireland,  stilled. 
By  the  forgetful  waters  they  forget 

Not  thee,  O  Inisfail  ! 
Upon  thy  fields  their  dreaming  eyes  are  set, 


THE   IRISH    MOVEMENT  189 

They  bear  thy  winds  call  ever  through  each  vale. 
Visions  of  victory  exalt  and  thrill 

Their  hearts'  whole  hunger  still; 
High  beats  their  longing  for  the  living  Gael. 

Sweet  Mother  !  in  what  marvellous  dear  ways 
Close  to  thine  heart  thou  keepest  all  thine  own! 
Far  off,  they  yet  can  consecrate  their  days 
To  thee,  and  on  the  swift  winds  westward  blown 
Send  thee  the  homage  of  their  hearts,  their  vow 

Of  one  most  sacred  care; 
To  thee  devote  all  passionate  power,  since  thou 
Vouchsafest  them,  O  land  of  love!  to  bear 
Sorrow  and  joy  with  thee.     Each  far  son  thrills 

Toward  thy  blue  dreaming  hills. 
And  longs  to  kiss  thy  feet  upon  them.  Fair! 

One  needs  no  drop  of  Irish  blood  in  his  veins  to 
feel  the  exaltation  and  minstrelsy  of  the  poet's 
mood.  One  feels,  too,  the  strange  mingling  of 
passion  and  aloofness,  of  melancholy  and  triumph, 
that  speaks  in  almost  every  poem  of  his  two  slender 
volumes.  I  have  contrasted  his  art  with  that  of 
Mr.  Yeats;  there  is  a  certain  fitness  in  quoting  the 
living  poet's  appreciation  of  his  fallen  compeer. 
Lionel  Johnson,  he  writes,  "  has  made  a  world  full 
of  altar  lights  and  golden  vestures  and  murmured 
Latin  and  incense  clouds  and  autumn  winds  and 
dead  leaves,  where  one  wanders,  remembering 
martyrdoms  and  courtesies  that  the  world  has 
forgotten.  His  ecstasy  is  the  ecstasy  of  combat, 
not  of  submission  to  the  Divine  will;  and  even 
when  he  remembers  that  '  the  old  Saints  prevail,' 


IQO  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

he  sees  the  '  one  ancient  Priest '  who  alone  oflFers 
the  Sacrifice,  and  remembers  the  loneliness  of 
the  Saints.  Had  he  not  this  ecstasy  of  com- 
bat, he  would  be  the  poet  of  those  peaceful 
and  unhappy  souls,  who,  in  the  symbolism  of 
a  living  Irish  visionary,  are  compelled  to  in- 
habit when  they  die  a  shadowy  island  Para- 
dise in  the  West."  It  is  this  "ecstasy  of 
combat,"  this  triumph  of  defeat  I  choose  to  call 
it,  that,  in  my  judgment,  marks  Mr.  Johnson  as 
the  one  great,  shall  I  sa}^,  and  genuinely  signi- 
ficant poet  of  the  present  Gaelic  movement.  Yet 
how  apt  Mr.  Yeats's  criticism  is  may  be  seen  from 
the  poem  Sertorius,  in  which  the  vague  longing 
of  these  Irish  dreamers  is  told  in  a  parable  of  the 
Roman  leader  in  Spain.  All  the  world  knows  the 
story  of  Sertorius,  and  of  his  white  hind  which 
the  soldiers  worshipped  as  an  oracle  of  Diana. 
Like  the  wistful  visionaries  of  Ireland,  his 
thoughts  turned  in  the  hour  of  defeat  to  the 
fabled  islands  of  the  Hesperides,  where  peace  and 
eternal  hopes  dwell  in  the  misty  West.  How  he 
went  not  on  that  journey  but  was  slain  traitor- 
ously at  a  banquet  is  recorded  in  history. 

SERTORIUS 

Beyond  the  Straits  of  Hercules, 
Behold  !  the  strange  Hesperian  seas, 
A  glittering  waste  at  break  of  dawn; 
High  on  the  westward  plunging  prow, 
What  dreams  are  on  thy  spirit  now, 
Sertorius  of  the  milk-white  fawn  ? 


THE   IRISH    MOVEMENT  I9I 

Not  sorrow  to  have  done  with  home  1 
The  tnouruiiig  destinies  of  Rome 
Have  exiled  Rome's  last  hope  with  thee; 
Nor  dost  thou  think  ou  thy  lost  Spain. 
What  stirs  thee  on  the  unknown  main? 
What  wilt  thou  from  the  virgin  sea? 

Hailed  by  the  faithless  voice  of  Spain, 
The  lightning  warrior  come  again, 
Where  wilt  thou  seek  the  flash  of  swords, 
Voyaging  toward  the  set  of  sun  ? 
Though  Rome  the  splendid  East  hath  won, 
Here  thou  wilt  find  no  Roman  lords. 


No  Tingis  here  lifts  fortress  walls; 
And  here  no  Lusitania  calls; 
What  hath  the  barren  sea  to  give  ? 
Yet  high  designs  enchaunt  thee  still; 
The  winds  are  loyal  to  thy  will; 
Not  yet  art  thou  too  tired  to  live. 

No  trader  thou,  to  northern  isles. 
Whom  mischief-making  gold  beguiles 
To  sunless  and  unkindly  coasts; 
What  spirit  pilots  thee  thus  far 
From  the  tempestuous  tides  of  war, 
Beyond  the  surging  of  the  hosts  ? 

Nay  !  this  thy  secret  will  must  be. 
Over  the  visionary  sea, 
Thy  sails  are  set  for  perfect  rest; 
Surely  thy  pure  and  holy  fawn 
Hath  whispered  of  an  ancient  lawn, 
Far  hidden  down  the  solemn  West. 


192  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

A  gracious  pleasaunce  of  calm  things; 
There  rose-leaves  fall  by  rippling  springs; 
And  captains  of  the  older  time, 
Touched  with  mild  light,  or  gently  sleep, 
Or  in  the  orchard  shadows  keep 
Old  friendships  of  the  golden  prime. 

The  far  seas  brighten  with  grey  gleams; 
O  winds  of  morning !     O  fair  dreams  ! 
Will  not  that  land  rise  up  at  noon  ? 
There,  casting  Roman  mail  away, 
Age  long  to  watch  the  falling  day, 
And  silvery  sea,  and  silvern  moon. 

Dreams  !  for  they  slew  thee;  Dreams  !  they  lured 

Thee  down  to  death  and  doom  assured; 

And  we  were  proud  to  fall  with  thee. 

Now,  shadows  of  the  men  we  were. 

Westward  indeed  we  voyage  here, 

Unto  the  end  of  all  the  sea. 

Woe  !  for  the  fatal,  festal  board; 
Woe  !  for  the  signal  of  the  sword, 
The  wine-cup  dashed  upon  the  ground ; 
We  are  but  sad,  eternal  ghosts. 
Passing  far  off  from  human  coasts, 
To  the  wan  land  eternal  bound. 


TOLSTOY;  OR,  THE  ANCIENT  FEUD  BE- 
TWEEN  PHII.OSOPHY  AND   ART 

This  has  been  a  centurj^  of  strange  conversions, 
and  not  least  strange  among  these  is  Count  Leo 
Tolstoy's  abdication  of  an  art  in  which  he  had 
won  world-wide  reputation  for  the  role  of  prophet 
and  iconoclast.  "  What  is  Art?"  he  has  asked 
himself,  and  his  published  answer,'  the  outcome 
of  fifteen  years  of  meditation,  is  a  denial  of  all  that 
has  made  art  noble  in  the  past,  and  a  challenge  to 
those  who  seek  to  continue  that  tradition  in  the 
present.  Furthermore  he  has  put  his  theory  into 
practice  in  a  long  and  powerful  novel,  Resurrec- 
tion.^ Naturally  such  a  renunciation  on  the  part 
of  an  undisputed  master  in  the  craft  caused  no 
small  commotion  among  poets  and  critics.  Many 
of  these,  chiefly  of  the  French  school,  shrugged 
their  shoulders  and  smiled  at  a  theory  that  would 
reject  the  works  of  Sophocles  and  Dante  and 
Shakespeare  as  "savage  and  meaningless,"  and 
find  in  Ujide  Tom's  Cabin  the  acme  of  art  toward 

'  What  is  Art  ?  By  Leo  F.  Tolstoy.  New  York  : 
T.  Y.  Crowell  &  Co. 

'  Resurrection.  By  I,eo  F.  Tolstoy.  New  York : 
Dodd,  Mead  &  Co. 

'^  193 


194  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

which  the  ages  have  been  tending.  Others  have 
taken  the  quasi  prophet  more  seriously,  and  with 
much  ingenuity  have  pointed  out  the  seeming 
flaws  in  his  argument.  Must  I  for  my  part  con- 
fess that  I  have  been  chiefly  impressed  by  the  ter- 
rible and  relentless  logic  of  the  book  ?  It  is  easy 
to  smile;  it  is  easy  to  denounce  the  work  as  "  lit- 
erary nihilism  put  into  practice  by  a  converted 
pessimist."  Pessimist  and  fanatic  and  barbarian 
Tolstoy  may  be,  and  to  judge  from  his  portrait 
alone  he  is  all  these;  yet  I  know  not  how  we  shall 
escape  his  ruthless  conclusions  unless  we  deny 
resolutely  his  premises,  and  these  are  in  part  what 
our  age  holds  as  its  dearest  heritage  of  truth. 
Furthermore,  his  theoretic  book  may  claim  to  be 
only  the  latest  blow  struck  in  a  quarrel  as  old  as 
human  consciousness  itself.  lyong  ago  Plato, 
himself  a  renegade  from  among  the  worshippers 
of  beauty,  could  speak  of  "  the  ancient  feud  be- 
tween philosophy  and  art,"  and  to-day  one  of  the 
barbarians  of  the  North  has  delivered  a  shrewd 
stroke  in  the  same  unending  conflict. 

Least  of  all  should  we  have  expected  to  find  in 
Greece  this  lurking  antipathy  between  art  and 
philosophy,  for  there,  if  anywhere  in  the  world, 
truth  and  beauty  seem  to  us  to  have  walked  hand 
in  hand.  It  is  curious  that  the  school  of  Socrates, 
which  did  so  much  to  introduce  a  formal  divorce 
between  these  ideas,  should  have  been  so  fond  of 
the  one  word  that  more  than  any  other  expresses 
the    intimate    union   of   beauty    and   goodness. 


TOLSTOY  195 

Kalokagathia,  beauty-and-goodness,  "that  solemn 
word  in  which  even  the  gods  take  dehght,"  was 
ever  on  their  lips.  In  the  beginning,  no  doubt, 
this  strangely  compounded  term  conveyed  the 
simple  thought  still  dear  to  our  own  youth  when 
a  fair  face  seems  naturally  and  inevitably  the 
index  of  a  noble  soul.  That  indeed  is  the  ideal 
which  we  believe  the  truest  gentlemen  of  Athens 
actually  attained;  we  think  we  see  it  portrayed  in 
the  statues  bequeathed  to  us  by  the  land;  it  is  at 
least  the  goal  toward  which  Greek  art  ever  strove 
as  the  reintegration  of  life.  But  after  all  we  must 
confess  that  this  harmony  of  the  inner  and  the 
outer  vision  was  but  an  ideal  in  Greece,  such  as 
has  now  and  again  glanced  before  other  eyes, — 
only  appearing  not  quite  so  fitfully  there  and  ap- 
proaching at  times  nearer  the  reality.  Had  it  been 
anything  more  than  a  desire  of  the  imagination, 
the  history  of  the  world  would  have  been  some- 
thing quite  different  from  the  vexed  pages  of 
growth  and  decay  which  we  now  read.  Perhaps, 
too,  Joubert  was  not  entirely  wrong  when  he  said 
that  "  God,  being  unable  to  bestow  truth  upon  the 
Greeks,  gave  them  poesy."  Achilles,  fair  with- 
out and  noble  within,  was  the  glory  of  the  race; 
but  too  often  the  reality  was  like  Paris,  divinely 
beautiful  and  beloved  of  the  goddess,  but  hollow 
at  heart.  From  an  early  date  the  wise  men  of  the 
land  foresaw  the  threatened  danger.  Pythagoras, 
who  descried  the  poets  tortured  in  hell,  was  not 
the  only  prophet  to  denounce  their  travesty  of  the 


196  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

gods;  nor  was  Solon  the  only  sage  who  looked 
askance  on  the  stage. 

But  Socrates,  the  first  man  of  the  Western  world 
to  attain  to  full  self-consciousness,  was  the  first 
also  to  ask  seriously,  What  are  truth  and  good- 
ness ?  and  what  is  beauty  ?  And  though  in 
general  he  would  deprive  beauty  of  its  peril,  by 
reducing  it  to  a  mere  matter  of  utility,  yet  at 
times  he  seems  as  a  philosopher  to  have  recog- 
nised its  doubtful  allurements.  Xenophon  reports 
an  amusing  conversation  with  his  master  on  the 
nature  of  kissing,  wherein  Socrates  in  his  usual 
style  of  badinage  hints  at  this  hidden  peril. 
"  Know  you  not,"  says  he,  "  that  this  monster, 
whom  you  call  beauty  and  youth,  is  more  terrible 
than  venomous  spiders?  These  can  sting  only 
by  contact,  but  that  other  monster  injects  his 
poison  from  a  distance  if  a  man  but  rest  his  eyes 
upon  him."  In  another  book  we  read  Socrates's 
misgivings  in  regard  to  the  current  meaning  of 
the  word  kalokagathia.  He  with  his  contempo- 
raries had  supposed  that  a  necessary  harmony 
existed  between  virtue  and  a  man's  outer  sem- 
blance, until  experience  brought  its  cruel  awak- 
ening. Beauty,  which  as  a  Greek  he  could  not 
omit  from  the  composition  of  a  full  man,  became 
thenceforth  for  him,  as  for  the  rest  of  the  world, 
mere  grace  of  inner  character,  scarcely  distinguish- 
able from  goodness  itself.  This  idea  is  naively 
developed  in  a  conversation  with  the  country 
gentleman   of  the   CEcotiomicus,   where  Socrates 


TOLSTOY  197 

asks  his  old  friend  how  despite  his  homely  ex- 
terior he  has  won  the  reputation  of  uniting  perfect 
beauty  and  goodness. 

If  we  are  a  little  surprised  to  hear  the  contem- 
porary of  Phidias  and  Sophocles  speak  doubtfully 
of  the  office  of  beauty,  what  shall  we  think  of  his 
disciple  Plato,  who  was  himself  in  youth  a  poet, 
and  who  in  manhood  was  master  of  all  styles, 
and  able  to  drape  in  the  robes  of  fancy  the  barest 
skeleton  of  logic?  He,  if  any  one,  has  given  us 
"  the  sweet  foode  of  sweetly  uttered  knowledge," 
and  we  further  may  say  of  him,  with  Sir  Phihp 
Sidney,  "  almost  hee  sheweth  himselfe  a  passion- 
ate lover,  of  that  unspeakable  and  everlasting 
beautie  to  be  scene  by  the  eyes  of  the  minde,  onely 
cleered  by  fayth  ";  and  yet  Plato  knew  and  could 
avow  that  "to  prefer  beauty  to  virtue  was  the  real 
and  utter  dishonour  of  the  soul."  I  can  imagine 
that  to  one  bred  on  the  visions  of  poetry  and  by 
birth  a  worshipper  of  all  the  fair  manifestations  of 
Nature,  nothing  could  be  more  disconcerting  than 
to  follow  the  changes  of  Plato's  doctrine  in  this 
regard.  In  the  earlier  dialogues  physical  comeli- 
ness is  but  a  symbol  of  iimer  grace,  a  guide  to 
lead  us  in  the  arduous  and  perilous  ascent  of  the 
soul;  and  his  theory  of  love  was  to  become  the 
teacher  of  idealism  to  a  new  world.  In  The  Re- 
public the  cardinal  virtues  are  blent  into  one  per- 
fect harmony  of  character  so  alluring  as  to  seem 
the  reflection  in  his  mind  of  all  the  visual  charm 
he  had  seen  in  Hellas.     But  even  here  his  change 


198  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

of  attitude  is  apparent;  this  same  dialogue  con- 
tains that  bitter  diatribe  against  poetry  and  music 
which  would  banish  inexorably  all  the  magicians 
of  art  from  his  ideal  state,  because  they  draw  the 
mind  from  the  contemplation  of  abstract  truth  to 
dwell  upon  her  deceptive  imitations.  The  world 
has  not  forgotten  and  will  never  forget  how  these 
greatest  Athenians  turned  away  their  eyes  from 
what  had  given  their  land  its  splendid  predomi- 
nance. Socrates's  question,  What  is  beauty  ?  was 
the  "little  rift  within  the  lute,"  that  was  to  widen 
until  the  music  of  Greece  became  hushed  for  ever. 
We  may  liken  the  texture  of  art  to  that  floating 
garment  of  gauze,  inwoven  with  a  myriad  forms 
and  symbols,  in  which  the  goddess  Natura  was 
wont  to  appear  to  the  visionary  eyes  of  the  school- 
men: we  may  liken  it  to  the  clouds  that  drift 
across  the  sky,  veiling  the  effulgence  of  the  sun 
and  spreading  an  ever  variable  canopy  of  splendour 
between  us  and  the  unfathomed  abyss:  we  may 
better  liken  it  to  the  curtain  that  hung  in  the 
temple  before  the  holy  of  holies;  and  the  rending 
of  the  curtain  from  top  to  bottom  may  signify  a 
changed  aspect  in  the  warfare  of  our  dual  nature. 
A  new  meaning  and  acrimony  enter  into  the  con- 
flict henceforth.  Christianity  introduced,  or  at 
least  strongly  emphasised,  those  principles  that 
were  in  the  end  to  make  possible  such  an  utter  re- 
volt as  Tolstoy's.  With  the  progress  of  the  new 
era,  the  feud  between  philosophy  and  art  will  take 
on  a  thousand  difierent  disguises,  appearing  now 


■f^ 


TOLSTOY  199 

as  a  contest  between  religion  and  the  senses,  and 
again  as  a  schism  within  the  bosom  of  the  Church 
itself.  To  the  followers  of  Christ,  the  indwelling 
of  divinity  is  no  longer  made  evident  by  beauty 
of  external  form,  for  their  incarnate  deity  came  to 
them  as  one  in  whom  there  was  "no  form  nor 
comeliness  "  nor  any  "  beauty  that  we  should  de- 
sire him."  Instead  of  magnanimity  and  magnifi- 
cence the  world  shall  learn  to  honour  humility;  a 
different  sense  shall  be  given  to  the  word  equality, 
and  the  individual  soul  will  assume  importance 
from  its  heavenly  destiny,  and  not  from  its  earthly 
force  or  impotence;  the  ambition  to  make  life 
splendid  shall  be  sunk  in  humanitarian  surrender 
to  the  weak;  the  genial  command  of  the  poet, 
"  Doing  righteousness  make  glad  your  heart," 
shall  be  changed  to  the  shrill  cry  of  the  monk, 
"But  woe  unto  those  that  know  not  their  own 
misery;  and  woe  yet  greater  unto  those  that  love 
this  miserable  and  corrupted  life!  "  Not  that  the 
old  desire  of  loveliness  shall  be  utterly  routed  from 
the  world;  but  more  and  more  it  will  be  severed 
from  the  life  of  the  spirit,  and  appear  more  and 
more  as  the  seducer,  and  not  the  spouse,  of  the 
soul. 

As  in  so  many  other  things  St.  Augustine 
voices  in  this  matter  also  the  sentiment  of  the 
Christian  world.  He  who  in  j'outli  had  written  a 
treatise  0?i  the  Fit  and  tlie  Beautiful,  turned  after 
his  conversion  to  bewail  his  unregenerate  infatua- 
tion over  the  charms  of  Virgil.     The  grace  of  the 


20O  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

natural  world  became  for  him  only  a  "snare  oi 
the  eyes  " ;  and  so  fearful  is  he  of  the  "  delight  of 
the  ears"  that  he  hesitates  to  accept  even  the 
singing  in  the  church. 

To  the  same  horror  of  the  lust  of  the  eye  and 
the  pride  of  life  may  be  traced  in  part  the  anoma- 
lous attitude  of  the  Fathers  and  later  churchmen 
toward  women.  It  was  the  mission  of  the  new 
faith  to  promulgate  the  distinctly  feminine  virtues 
in  place  of  the  sterner  ideals  of  antiquity, — love  in 
place  of  understanding,  sympathy  for  justice,  self- 
surrender  for  magnanimity, — and  as  a  consequence 
the  eternal  feminine  was  strangely  idealised,  giving 
us  in  religion  the  worship  of  the  Virgin  Mary, 
and  in  art  the  raptures  of  chivalry  culminating  in 
Dante's  adoration  of  Beatrice.  But  there  is  a 
darker  side  to  the  picture.  Because  the  men  of 
the  new  faith  could  not  acquiesce  in  any  simple 
life  of  the  senses,  woman  must  be  either  ethereal- 
ised  into  an  abstraction  of  religious  virtues,  or,  if 
taken  humanly,  must  be  debased  as  the  bearer  of 
all  the  temptations  of  the  flesh.  She  is  the  earthly 
vision  of  heaven  or  hell, — unless  to  some  more 
human  satirist  she  appears  simply  as  purgatory. 
It  is  painful  to  read  the  continuous  libel  of  the 
mediaeval  schoolmen  upon  woman;  from  St.  An- 
thony down  she  is  the  real  devil  dreaded  by  the 
pious,  a  personification  of  the  libido  sentieyidi. 

This  same  revolt  from  the  senses  reaches  a  dra- 
matic crisis  in  the  eighth  century  under  Leo  the 
iconoclastic   Emperor;    and   iconoclasm,    though 


TOLSTOY  201 

largely  the  work  of  a  single  man,  produced  far- 
reaching  results  in  history,  hastening  the  final 
disruption  of  the  East  and  the  West,  and  estab- 
lishing the  Pope  more  firmly  on  his  seat.  It  may 
seem  that  Plato's  philosophic  feud  with  art  has 
assumed  a  grotesque  disguise  when  championed 
by  rude  fanatic  mobs  wreaking  their  vengeance 
on  altars  and  images;  yet  it  is  but  the  same 
quarrel  in  a  new  and  more  virulent  form.  It  is 
significant,  too,  of  an  antagonism  within  the 
Christian  fold  itself  which  even  to  this  day  has 
not  been  fully  allayed.  The  old  dispensation  had 
forbidden  the  making  of  graven  images;  Christ 
had  declared  that  God  should  be  worshipped 
neither  in  Jerusalem  nor  in  Samaria;  his  worship 
was  to  be  of  the  spirit  alone.  And  it  was  to  sat- 
isfy this  negative  suprasensuous  side  of  religion 
that  the  Byzantine  Emperor  instituted  his  reform. 
He  failed,  but  was  at  least  a  forerunner  of  the 
Reformation  which  was  largely  a  revolt  of  the 
Northern  races  against  the  instinct  of  the  South 
to  clothe  abstract  ideas  in  form  and  colour.  I,uther 
was  the  great  and  successful  iconoclast. 

But  no  religious  aspiration  could  entirely  deaden 
the  appeal  of  the  senses.  During  the  heat  of  the 
iconoclastic  debate,  John  of  Damascus  had  given 
fervent  expression  to  the  soul's  need  of  visible 
symbols.  "Thou  perchance,"  he  writes,  "art 
lifted  up  and  set  further  apart  from  this  material 
world;  thou  walkest  above  this  body  as  if  borne 
down  by  no  weight  of  the  flesh,  and  mayst  despise 


202  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

whatever  thine  eyes  behold.  But  I,  who  am  a 
man  and  clothed  in  the  body,  desire  to  converse 
with  holy  things  in  the  body  and  to  see  them  with 
mine  eyes."  And  again  he  asseverates  that  those 
who  wish  to  be  united  to  God  in  the  mind  alone 
should  go  further  and  take  from  the  Church  her 
lamps,  her  sweet-smelling  incense,  her  chanted 
prayers,  and  the  very  sacraments  which  are  of 
material  nature, — and  all  these  things  were  indeed 
to  be  swept  away  in  good  time.  But  in  the  mean- 
while Christianity  had  produced  its  own  legiti- 
mate form  of  art,  diflferent  utterly  from  the  brave 
parade  of  paganism,  yet  not  without  its  justifica- 
tion. The  artist  did  not  seek  for  pure  beauty,  for 
that  intimate  harmony  of  sense  and  spirit  which 
had  been  the  ideal  of  Greece;  matter  is  now  con- 
strained to  express  the  humility,  the  ascetic  dis- 
dain, the  spiritual  aspiration  and  loneliness  of  the 
soul.  Yet  one  other,  and  perhaps  the  most  es- 
sential, aspect  of  the  faith,  the  humanitarian 
sense  of  brotherhood  and  equality,  must  wait  for 
the  nineteenth  century  for  its  complete  utterance. 
If  the  Reformation  was  but  a  prolongation  of 
the  iconoclastic  sentiment  with  certain  new  ele- 
ments of  moral  and  political  antipathy  added,  the 
Renaissance  in  the  South  was  a  deliberate  attempt 
to  re-establish  the  old  pagan  harmony.  But 
something  artificial  and  hollow  soon  showed  itself 
in  the  movement.  The  true  balance  was  never 
attained,  or  if  attained  was  held  but  for  a  moment; 
and  the  sensuous  love  of  beauty,  severed  from  the 


TOLSTOY  203 

deeper  moral  instincts  of  humanity,  dragged  out 
a  spurious  existence,  until  now  it  is  seen  in  the 
most  degraded  forms  of  modern  French  art. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  follow  the  conflict  of  our 
dual  nature  through  all  the  ramifications  of  his- 
tor5^  Those  who  wish  to  study  it  in  its  most  dra- 
matic moment  may  turn  to  the  story  of  England 
in  the  seventeenth  centur}^,  or  read  yohn  Ingle- 
sant,  where  it  developed  into  a  romance  of  curious 
fascination.  And  to,  us  of  America  at  least  the 
struggle  of  that  period  must  always  possess 
singular  interest;  for  out  of  it  grew  the  intellectual 
life  of  our  nation,  and  even  to-day  the  poverty  of 
our  art  and  literature  is  partly  due  to  the  fact  that 
our  strongest  colonists  brought  with  them  only 
one  faction  of  the  endless  feud. 

For  the  feud  is  not  settled  and  can  never  be 
settled  while  human  nature  remains  what  it  is. 
To-day  the  man  who  approaches  the  higher  intel- 
lectual life  is  confronted  by  the  same  question 
that  troubled  Plato.  He  who  can  choose  without 
hesitation  between  art  and  religion,  or  between 
the  new  antinomy  of  literature  and  science,  has 
climbed  but  a  little  way  on  the  ladder  of  experi- 
ence. There  was  a  parable  current  among  the 
Greeks,  and  still  to  be  found  in  our  modern  school 
readers,  which  tells  how  the  youthful  Hercules 
in  the  pathway  of  life  was  met  by  two  women  who 
represented  virtue  and  pleasure,  and  who  bade 
him  choose  between  the  careers  they  ofiered. 
And  it  has  often   seemed  to  me  that  the  fable 


204  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

might  be  applied  without  much  distortion  to 
many  an  ardent  man  who  in  his  youth  goes  out 
into  the  solitudes  to  meditate  on  the  paths  of  am- 
bition,— his  choice  lying  not  between  virtue  and 
pleasure,  but  between  the  philosophic  and  the 
imaginative  life.  As  he  sits  musing  in  some  such 
solitude  of  the  spirit,  we  can  discern  two  feminine 
forms  approach  him,  very  tall  and  stately, —  one 
of  them  good  to  look  upon  and  noble  in  stature, 
clad  in  modest  raiment,  and  with  a  brooding  gaze 
of  austerity  in  her  eyes  as  if  troubled  by  no  vision 
of  turbid  existence;  the  other  more  radiant  in  face, 
and  richer  and  more  alluring  in  form,  with  wide 
open  eyes  that  might  be  mirrors  for  all  the  de- 
lightful things  of  nature,  and  dressed  in  a  floating 
transparent  robe  wherein  are  woven  figures  of 
many  strange  flowers  and  birds.  She  of  the  flut- 
tering garment  comes  forward  before  the  other, 
and  greets  the  youth  effusively,  and  bids  him  fol- 
low her,  for  she  will  lead  him  by  a  pleasant  path 
where  he  shall  suffer  no  diminution  of  the  desires 
of  his  heart,  neither  be  withheld  from  the  fulness 
of  earthl}'  experience,  but  always  he  shall  behold 
a  changing  vision  of  wonder  and  beauty,  and  in 
the  end  be  received  into  the  palace  of  Fame. 
Here  the  youth  asks  by  what  name  she  is  known, 
and  she  replies:  "  My  friends  call  me  Fancy,  and 
I  dwell  in  the  meadows  of  Art,  but  my  enemies 
call  me  Illusion."  In  the  meanwhile  the  other 
woman  has  drawn  near,  and  now  she  says  to  the 
young  man:  "  Nay,  follow  me  rather,  and  I  will 


TOLSTOY  205 

show  you  the  true  value  of  life.  I  will  not  de- 
ceive you  with  cunniug  seductions  of  the  eye  and 
ear  that  lead  only  to  distraction  in  the  end.  The 
road  in  which  I  shall  guide  you  lies  apart  from 
the  vanities  and  triumphs  of  earthly  hopes;  the 
way  of  renunciation  will  seem  hard  to  tread  at 
first,  but  slowly  a  new  joy  of  the  understanding 
will  be  awakened  in  you,  born  of  a  contempt  for 
the  fleeting  illusions  of  this  world,  and  in  the  end 
you  shall  attain  to  another  and  higher  peace  that 
passeth  understanding.  I  am  named  Insight,  and 
by  some  my  home  is  called  Philosophy  and  by 
others  Religion."  I  can  fancy  that  some  such 
parting  of  the  ways  has  come  to  many  of  those 
who  by  choosing  resolutely  have  won  renown  as 
artists  or  seers.  I  can  believe  that  some  who 
have  elected  the  smoother  path  have  even  in  the 
full  triumph  of  success  felt  moments  of  regret  for 
the  other  life  of  ascetic  contemplation. 

More  than  one  great  artist,  to  be  sure,  has 
vaunted  the  perfect  efficacy  of  his  craft  to  satisfy 
the  human  soul;  more  than  one  poet  has  pub- 
lished his  Defence  of  Poetry,  and  declared  with 
Shelley  that  "the  great  instrument  of  moral  good 
is  the  imagination,  and  poetry  administers  to  the 
eflfect  by  acting  upon  the  cause."  Even  Horace 
has  written  his  "  melius  Chrysippo  et  Crantore  "; 
and  no  doubt  in  the  last  analysis  the  poets  are 
riglit.  Yet  still  the  haunting  dread  will  thrust 
itself  on  the  mind,  that  in  accepting,  though  it 
be  but  as  a  symbol,  the  beauty  of  the  world,  we 


206  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

remain  the  dupes  of  a  smiling  illusion.  And 
something  of  this  dread  seems  to  rise  to  the  sur- 
face now  and  again  in  the  works  of  those  who 
have  penetrated  most  deeply  into  art  and  life.  So 
the  pathos  of  Shakespeare's  sonnets  may  be  chiefly 
due  to  the  effect  upon  us  of  seeing  a  great  and 
proud  genius  humiliated  before  a  creature  of  the 
court.  Not  all  his  supremacy  of  art  could  quite 
recompense  the  poet  for  his  uneasiness  before  the 
fine  assurance  of  noble  birth,  or  cover  completely 
the  ' ' public  means  which  public  manners  breeds ' ' ; 
but  gathering  the  hints  here  and  there  in  the  son- 
nets and  comparing  them  with  the  scattered  pas- 
sages of  disillusionment  in  the  plays,  I  seem  to 
read  a  deeper  discontent  with  the  artistic  life,  a 
feeling  that  he  had  not  been  faithful  to  his  own 
truer  self. 

Alas,  't  is  true  I  have  gone  here  and  there 
And  made  myself  a  motley  to  the  view, 

Gor'd  mine  own  thoughts,  sold  cheap  what  is 
most  dear, 
Made  old  offences  of  affections  new; 

Most  true  it  is  that  I  have  look'd  on  truth 
Askance  and  strangely, — 

he  writes  in  one  of  the  sonnets;  and  may  it  not 
be  that  this  petulant  discontent  is  partly  responsi- 
ble for  his  failure  to  care  for  the  preservation  of 
his  works  ? 

Still  more  striking  is  the  attitude  of  Michael 
Angelo  in  old  age  toward  the  occupation  of  his 


TOLSTOY  207 

life.  I  trust  I  may  be  pardoned  for  giving  at 
length  a  translation  of  the  well-known  sonnet  in 
which  the  supreme  artist  turns  at  last  for  conso- 
lation to  a  Love  above  his  earthly  love: 

After  the  seas  tempestuous,  lo,  I  steer 
My  fragile  bark  with  all  my  hopes  aboard 
Unto  that  common  haven  where  the  award 

Of  each  man's  good  and  evil  must  appear. 

Wherefore  the  phantasie  I  held  so  dear, — 
That  made  of  art  my  idol  and  my  lord, — 
Too  well  I  know  is  all  with  errors  stored, 

And  man's  desires  that  bind  him  helpless  here. 

Those  amorous  thoughts  that  lightly  moved  my 
breast. 
What  do  they  now  when  near  two  deaths  I  toss, 
One  certain  here,  one  threatening  yet  above? 

Not  painting  now  nor  sculpture  lulls  to  rest; 
The  soul  hath  turned  to  that  diviner  L,ove 
Whose  arms  to  clasp  us  opened  on  the  cross. 

It  would  be  absurd  to  compare  the  words  and 
actions  of  Tolstoy  with  the  great  names  already 
cited,  were  it  not  that  the  Russian  novelist  is  a 
true  spokesman  of  certain  tendencies  of  the  age. 
To  be  sure,  the  religious  aspect  of  the  ancient  feud 
has  for  the  present  been  much  obscured,  and  the 
most  notable  conflict  to-day  is  undoubtedly  be- 
tween the  imagination  and  the  analytical  spirit  of 
science.  But  within  the  realm  of  art  itself  a  curi- 
ous division  has  appeared  which  is  still  intimately 
connected  with  tlie  religious  instinct  though  in 
a  new  form;   and  on  this  present  aspect  of  the 


208  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

question  the  career  of  Tolstoy  will  be  seen  to  throw 
an  instructive  light. 

The  humanitarian  side  of  Christianity  had  been 
more  or  less  concealed  throughout  the  Middle 
Ages  by  the  anxiety  for  personal  salvation.  In 
such  a  work  as  the  Imitation  the  brotherhood  of 
mankind  taught  by  the  Apostles  was  quite  smoth- 
ered by  a  refined  and  spiritual  form  of  egotism; 
nor  can  we  imagine  a  St.  John  declaring,  "As 
often  as  I  have  gone  forth  among  men,  I  have  re- 
turned home  less  a  man."  Both  the  isolation 
peculiar  to  such  an  ideal  and  the  spirituality 
which  it  had  in  common  with  earlier  Christianity 
were  impossible  after  the  humanism  of  the  Renais- 
sance and  the  scepticism  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Instead  of  these  many  things  conspired  together 
at  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  em- 
phasise that  other  phase  of  Christianity,  the  be- 
lief in  the  divine  right  of  the  individual  and 
the  brotherhood  of  man.  Deprive  this  belief 
of  spirituality,  and  add  to  it  a  sort  of  moral  im- 
pressionism which  abjures  the  judgment  and 
appeals  only  to  the  emotions,  and  you  have  the 
humanitarian  religion  of  the  age.  And  naturally 
the  most  serious  art  of  the  times  has  reflected  this 
movement. 

So,  for  example,  Wordsworth  has  been  much 
lauded  as  the  high  priest  of  Nature,  whereas  in  re- 
ality the  important  innovation  introduced  by  him 
into  English  poetry  is  not  his  appreciation  of  Na- 
ture but  his  humanitarianism,  his  peculiarly  senti- 


TOLSTOY  209 

mental  attitude  toward  humble  life.  This,  and 
not  any  feeling  of  the  exigencies  of  art, — for  his 
later  work  shows  that  he  had  no  such  artistic  sensi- 
tiveness,— is  the  true  source  of  his  determination 
to  employ  "  the  language  of  conversation  in  the 
middle  and  lower  classes  of  society."  Art  is  no 
longer  the  desire  of  select  spirits  to  ennoble  and 
make  beautiful  their  lives,  but  an  effort  to  touch 
and  elevate  the  common  man  and  to  bring  the 
proud  into  sympathy  with  the  vulgar.  And  this, 
too,  explains  Wordsworth's  choice  of  such  humble 
themes  as  Michael,  and  The  Idiot  Boy,  and  a  host 
of  the  same  sort.  The  genius  of  Wordsworth  was 
in  this  prophetic  of  what  was  to  be  the  deepest  re- 
ligious instinct  of  the  age;  and  if  this  instinct  has 
as  yet  produced  few  great  poetic  names  besides 
that  of  Wordsworth  himself  and  Shelley,  yet  the 
strength  of  such  a  novel  as  Miss  Wilkins's  yerome 
and  the  public  reception  of  such  a  poem  as  The 
Man  with  the  Hoe  {horresco  ref evens)  show  perhaps 
how  deep  a  hold  the  feeling  is  to  have  on  the  lit- 
erature of  the  immediate  future. 

As  a  revolt  against  this  ideal  and  a  feeble  pro- 
longation of  the  aims  of  the  Renaissance,  the  con- 
trary school  of  Art  for  Art's  sake  has  arisen,  in 
which  beauty,  like  a  bodiless  phantom  of  desire, 
lures  the  seeker  ever  further  and  further  from  real 
life,  weaning  him  from  the  healthier  aspiration  of 
his  time,  and  only  too  often  plunging  him  into  the 
mire  of  acrid  sensuality.  The  Goncourts  in  their 
Journal  have  admirably  expressed  the  wasteful 


2IO  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

illusion  of  this  search :  "L,e  tourment  de  rhomme 
de  pensee  est  d'aspirer  au  Beau,  sans  avoir  jamais 
une  conscience  fixe  et  certaine  du  Beau."  We 
wonder  to  what  hidden  recess  of  the  world  the  old 
Greek  vision  of  the  union  of  beauty  and  virtue  has 
flown,  and  if  that  too  is  only  an  empty  phantom 
of  the  mind. 

Such,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  present  form  of  the 
ancient  feud  between  philosophy  and  art,  now 
waged  within  the  field  of  art  itself — if  this  am- 
biguous use  of  the  word  may  be  pardoned.  The 
complexity  of  life  of  course  does  much  to  obscure 
the  contrast  of  these  two  tendencies,  but  it  is  nat- 
ural that  a  man  of  Tolstoy's  race,  with  his  bar- 
baric use  of  logic  and  his  intemperate  scorn  of  the 
golden  mean,  should  see  the  contrast  in  its  naked- 
ness and  fling  himself  into  the  battle  with  fanatic 
ardour.  But  perhaps  he  himself  does  not  under- 
stand, and  others  may  not  at  first  perceive,  how 
much  he  has  in  common  with  the  decadent  artists 
whom  he  attacks,  and  how  the  true  opponent  of 
that  tendency  would  be  the  man  of  sufficient  in- 
sight to  present  to  the  world  a  new  and  adequate 
ideal  of  the  beautiful. 

Tolstoy's  definition  of  art  is  very  clear  and  con- 
sistent: 

Art  [he  maintains]  is  not,  as  the  metaphysicians  say, 
the  manifestation  of  some  mysterious  Idea  of  beauty,  or 
God ;  it  is  not  ...  a  game  in  which  man  lets  oflF 
his  excess  of  stored-up  energy;  it  is  not  the  expression  of 
man's  emotion  by  external  signs;  it  is  not  the  production 


TOLSTOY  2 1 1 

of  pleasing  objects;  and,  above  all,  it  is  not  pleasure;  but 
it  is  a  means  of  union  among  men,  joining  them  to- 
gether in  the  same  feelings,  and  indispensable  for  the 
life  and  progress  toward  well-being  of  individuals  and  of 
humanity.  .  .  .  To  evoke  in  one's  self  a  feeling  one 
has  experienced,  and  .  .  .  so  to  transmit  that  feeling 
that  others  may  experience  the  same  feeling — this  is  the 
activity  of  art. 

Tolstoy's  position  is  precise,  but  in  the  end  does 
lie  oflfer  any  ideal  more  than  the  decadent  who 
seeks  beauty  as  a  refined,  or  even  gross,  means  of 
pleasure,  or  than  the  pure  humanitarian  who  sym- 
pathises with  mankind  without  any  ulterior  spirit- 
ual insight  ?  I  cannot  see  how  the  reformer  has 
passed  beyond  mere  impressionism,  and  impres- 
sionism is  one  of  his  most  hated  foes.  The  end 
of  art  for  him  is  simply  to  transmit  feeling  from 
man  to  man.  He  distinctly  denies  the  office  of 
the  intellect  in  art,  ascribing  this  to  science,  and 
he  has  left  no  room  for  the  higher  appeal  to  the 
will.  The  strength  of  the  impression  conveyed  is 
the  final  criterion  of  excellence.  The  artist  is 
amenable  to  no  laws,  and  his  work  ij  not  subject 
to  interpretation  or  to  criticism.  "  One  of  the 
chief  conditions  of  artistic  creation,"  he  says,  "is 
the  complete  freedom  of  the  artist  from  every  kind 
cf  preconceived  demand."  The  whim  of  the  in- 
dividual in  the  supreme  arbiter  of  taste.  Sym- 
pathy, and  not  judgment,  is  the  goal  of  culture. 
Nor  does  the  old  notion  of  beauty  suffer  less  at  his 
hands.     To  him  the  Greeks  were  but  savages  (it  is 


212  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

a  Russian  who  speaks),  and  their  conception  of  the 
kalokagathia  the  result  of  sheer  ignorance.  There 
is  no  ideal  which  beauty  serves,  and  its  apphcatiou 
to  character  is  a  mere  abuse  of  words.  To  him, 
as  to  the  decadents  and  the  humanitarians,  beauty 
is  no  more  than  a  name  for  pleasure,  and  no  ex- 
planation can  be  given  why  any  object  should 
please  one  man  and  displease  another.  So  far  we 
are  on  ground  common  to  both  humanitarianism 
and  decadent  art;  but  at  this  point  occurs  the  di- 
vision, and  Tolstoy  as  a  true  schismatic  throws 
himself  on  one  side  with  the  whole  vehemence  of 
his  nature. 

Seeing  that  the  pursuit  of  beauty  as  something 
unconnected  with  character  is  a  most  insidious 
danger,  and  that  art  which  possesses  such  an  aim 
must  inevitably  become  corrupt,  he  cuts  the  Gord- 
ian  knot  by  discarding  beauty  altogether  as  one 
■f  the  elements  of  art.  In  place  of  it  he  would 
complete  his  theory  of  impressionism  and  the  di- 
vine right  of  the  individual  by  adding  the  moral 
intention  which  makes  of  these  a  religion.  The 
old  ideal  of  art  had  been  sought  in  the  union  of 
the  higher  intellect  and  the  aspirations  of  the  will 
touched  with  emotion;  and  the  final  court  of  ap- 
peal was  the  taste  of  the  man  who  had  attained  to 
the  most  perfect  harmony  of  culture  and  to  the 
fullest  development  of  character.  Tolstoy,  on  the 
contrary,  carries  his  doctrine  of  individualism  to 
the  extreme.  If  the  light  treatment  of  so  grave 
a  subject  may  be  pardoned, 


TOLSTOY  213 

He  is  the  same  as  the  Chartist  who  spoke  at  a  meeting  in 

Ireland, 
"  What,    and  is  not  one  vian,  fellow  men,  as  good  as 

another?'' 
"  Faith,"  replied  Pat  "  and  a  deal  better  too  !  " 

Some  criterion  of  value  he  must  have,  and  to  find 
this  he  turns  to  the  judgment  of  the  common 
Russian  peasant.  Nothing  gives  a  better  idea  of 
the  change  of  civilisation  than  to  compare  Tols- 
toy's constant  reference  of  art  to  the  simple  un- 
tutored countryman,  with  the  attitude  of  a  man 
like  Pindar  in  the  old  Greek  days,  or  with  the 
contempt  of  ottr  Elizabethans  for  "the  breath  that 
comes  from  the  uncapable  multitude;  "  for  it  must 
be  remembered  that,  after  all,  the  Russian  fanatic 
is  a  man  of  the  age,  and  that  hidden  in  the  heart 
of  each  of  us  lies  this  same  curious  deference  to 
the  untrained  individual.  And  in  spite  of  this  in- 
dividualism,— or  should  we  say  in  consequence  of 
it? — Tolstoy  has  attained  his  own  conception  of 
universality  as  a  basis  for  art.  It  was  formerly 
the  belief  of  the  sages  that  by  ascending  the  ladder 
of  intellectual  experience  a  man  might  leave  be- 
hind the  desires  and  emotions  in  which  his 
personal  life  was  bound  up,  and  reach  a  purer  at- 
mosphere where  only  his  trtier  universal  self  could 
breathe.  And  this  obscurely  and  dimly  was  the 
belief  of  the  poet.  But  Tolstoy  would  find  the 
universal  by  descending.  Art  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  intellect  or  with  the  will,  or  yet  with 
the  exclusive  emotions  of  a  falsely  isolated  and 


214  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

corrupted  aristocracy,  but  appeals  to  the  heart  of 
the  humblest  man,  in  whom  the  universal  feelings 
of  humanity  have  not  been  covered  over  by  culture 
or  luxury.  At  least,  as  a  revolt  against  the  ex- 
clusiveness  of  art  for  art's  sake,  this  acceptance 
of  humanitarianism  in  its  crudest  form  is  a  real 
advance.  "  The  feeling  of  pride,  the  feeling  of 
sexual  desire,  and  the  feeling  of  weariness  of  life," 
are  indeed  not  the  true  themes  of  art,  and  better 
than  these  are  "  humility,  purity,  compassion, 
love."  "Art,"  he  says,  "is  not  a  pleasure,  a 
solace,  or  an  amusement;  art  is  a  great  matter;  " 
and  we  may  forgive  him  much  for  that  trumpet 
call.  Art  is  indeed  to  him  the  handmaid  of  re- 
ligion. Of  the  spiritual  quest  of  the  individual 
soul  to  sever  himself  from  the  world  and  to  lose 
himself  in  communion  with  God,  little  or  nothing 
remains:  the  very  words  sound  meaningless  in  our 
ears.  Let  us  not  deceive  ourselves:  our  religion 
is,  as  Tolstoy  states,  "  the  new  relation  of  man  to 
the  world  around  him; "  and  in  the  effort  to  escape 
by  means  of  humility  and  universal  sympathy 
from  the  anarchy  and  selfishness  of  individualism, 
art,  regarded  as  the  transmission  of  feeling  from 
man  to  man,  may  be  a  great  force.  It  thus  be- 
comes with  science  one  of  the  two  organs  of  hu- 
man progress,  science  pertaining  to  the  intellect 
and  art  dealing  with  the  interchange  of  emotions. 
Progress  to  Tolstoy,  as  to  the  rest  of  his  genera- 
tion, is  the  battle-cry  of  the  new  faith,  for  "  re- 
ligious perception  is  nothing  else  than  the  first 


TOLSTOY  2 1 5 

indication  of  that  which  is  coming  into  existence." 
If  you  ask  him  toward  what  far-off  divine  event 
this  progress  tends,  he  will  answer  with  the  clos- 
ing words  of  his  book,  the  "brotherly  union 
among  men."  Nor,  until  some  ulterior  goal  is 
proclaimed,  can  I  see  that  the  humanitarianism  of 
Tolstoy  or  of  any  other  doctrinaire  saves  us  from 
this  vicious  circle  of  attempting  to  unite  men  for 
the  mere  sake  of  union. 

And  in  the  case  of  Tolstoy  this  humanitarian 
religion  is  marred  by  a  stain  that  marks  it  pe- 
culiarly as  a  falling  away  from  the  real  doctrine 
of  Christ  on  which  he  builds  as  on  a  foundation. 
He  claims  to  announce  to  a  forgetful  age  the  true 
Gospel  of  Jesus,  and  the  solemnity  and  undoubted 
sincerity  of  his  appeal  have  startled  many  hearers 
from  their  apathy.  They  hear  the  very  speech 
of  Christ  on  his  lips  and  wonder  whether  after  all 
this  humanitarianism  of  the  day  is  the  perfect  and 
purified  revival  of  the  mission  preached  by  the 
Messiah  to  the  Old  World  which  could  not  under- 
stand him.  They  hear  the  very  speech  of  Christ, 
yet  their  hearts  are  only  troubled  by  what  they 
hear  and  no  peace  of  conviction  follows.  They 
are  torn  by  the  diversity  of  their  feelings,  and, 
finding  no  flaw  in  the  pitiless  logic  of  the  prophet, 
are  ready  often  to  deny  the  authority  of  the  Master 
whose  words  he  repeats. 

Count  Tolstoy  accepts  without  reservation  the 
plain  precepts  of  the  Gospel,  and  demands  our 
adherence  to  the  strict  letter  of  the  law.     This 


2l6  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

may  be  well,  although  possibly  it  denotes  some- 
thing of  the  false  logic  of  fanaticism  to  dwell  so 
persistently  on  the  one  command,  "  Resist  not 
evil."  But  deeper  than  the  commands  lies  the 
spirit  of  Christ;  and  he  who  follows  the  law  of  the 
Gospel  without  heeding  the  spirit,  wherein  does 
he  differ  from  the  Pharisees  of  the  old  dispensation 
whom  Christ  so  vehemently  denounced  ? 

If  you  ask  in  what  respect  Tolstoy  misses  the 
heart  of  true  religion  and  of  Christ,  I  would  re- 
ply in  the  words  of  a  famous  Frenchwoman,  "  La 
joie  de  V  esprit  en  marque  la  force'' — the  joy  of  the 
spirit  is  the  measure  of  its  force.  It  may  seem 
trifling  to  confront  the  solemn  exhortation  of  a 
prophet  with  the  words  of  Ninon  de  I'Enclos, 
whose  chief  claim  on  our  memory  is  the  scanda- 
lous story  of  her  grandson,  who  killed  himself  on 
discovering  that  he  had  fallen  in  love  unwittingly 
with  his  own  grandmother;  and  yet  I  know  not 
where  a  saner  criticism  could  be  found  of  the  ar- 
rogant dogmatism  of  this  Russian  bigot.  There 
is  no  joy  in  Tolstoy,  and  lacking  joy  he  lacks  the 
deepest  instinct  of  religion.  I  know  that  here  and 
there  a  sentence,  or  even  a  page,  may  be  quoted 
from  Tolstoy  that  sounds  as  if  he  had  discovered 
joy  in  his  new  faith,  and  I  know  that  he  repeats 
volubly  the  glad  tidings  that  are  said  to  have 
made  the  angels  sing  as  they  never  sang  before; 
but  it  needs  no  more  than  a  glance  at  the  rigid, 
glaring  eyes  of  the  old  man  to  feel  that  the  soul 
within  him    feeds    on  bitter    and    uncharitable 


TOLSTOY  217 

thoughts,  and  it  needs  but  a  little  familiarity  with 
his  later  work  in  fiction  to  learn  that  the  ground 
of  his  spirit  is  bitterness  and  denunciation  and 
despair. 

It  is  natural  that  a  writer  of  Tolstoy's  gloomy 
convictions  should  deny  the  validity  of  beauty 
and  should  call  the  Greeks  ignorant  savages  be- 
cause they  believed  in  beauty.  His  own  later 
work  shows  an  utter  absence  of  the  sense  of 
beauty  and  joy.  The  drama  called  La  Puissance 
des  Tenlbres — I  do  not  know  that  it  has  ever  been 
translated  into  English — is  one  of  the  most  revolt- 
ing and  heart-sickening  productions  of  the  past 
century.  The  imagination  of  the  author  has  ap- 
parently dwelt  on  unclean  objects  until  it  has  be- 
come crazed  with  a  mingled  feeling  toward  them 
of  attraction  and  repulsion. 

Count  Tolstoy  takes  his  law  of  righteousness 
from  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and  that  is  well; 
but  he  has  forgotten  the  song  of  joy  that  runs  like 
a  golden  thread  through  that  discourse — "  Blessed 
are  they  that  mourn;  for  they  shall  be  comforted. 
.  .  .  Rejoice,  and  be  exceeding  glad."  Out 
of  the  preaching  of  Christ  proceeds  the  wonderful 
and  beautiful  lesson  of  the  fowls  of  the  air  and  of 
the  lilies  of  the  field;  out  of  the  preaching  of 
Tolstoy  comes  the  loathsome  Powers  of  Darkness. 
Or,  if  we  look  for  a  more  modern  instance,  we 
may  read  the  Fioreltioi  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  than 
whom  no  one  has  trod  nearer  to  the  footsteps  of 
Christ.     The  parables  and  poems  of  St.  Francis 


2l8  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

are  all  aglow  with  passionate  joy  and  tenderness 
and  beauty. 

I  do  not  mean  that  sorrow  and  denunciation  are 
banished  from  the  teaching  of  Christ.  But  the 
sorrow  of  Christ  is  not  the  uncharitable  cry  alone 
of  one  whose  spirit  has  been  wounded  by  seeing 
wrong  and  injustice  in  the  world.  Does  it  need  a 
prophet  to  tell  us  the  times  are  out  of  joint?  Nor 
is  it  the  anguish  of  a  spirit  that  has  retreated  bit- 
terly upon  itself  because  the  world  does  not  re- 
spond to  his  own  personal  demands.  It  is  rather 
the  brooding  pity  of  one  who  sees  that  the  fashion 
of  this  world  passeth  away,  and  that  rich  and  poor 
alike  are  in  the  bondage  of  sin.  There  is  in  him 
neither  the  rancor  of  class  hatred  nor  the  wail  of 
personal  disillusion.  The  world  is  dark  to  him 
because  it  lies  outside  the  great  and  wonderful 
radiance  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  If  I  read 
aright  the  fragmentary  record  of  Christ's  life  it 
was  more  filled  with  the  joy  of  spiritual  insight 
than  with  the  bitterness  of  earthly  despair. 

And  this  is  not  the  nature  of  Christianity  alone, 
but  of  true  faith  wherever  found.  We  hear  much 
of  the  pessimism  of  Buddha,  and  Schopenhauer  is 
supposed  to  have  sucked  thence  the  poison  of  his 
philosophy;  but  in  reality  the  doctrine  of  Buddha 
in  its  pure  form  is  one  of  unspeakable  gladness. 
He  dwelt  much  on  the  transitor>'  nature  of  this 
world  and  on  the  misery  of  human  life,  but  he 
dwelt  far  more  on  the  ineffable  peace  and  joy  of 
deliverance.    There  is  the  pessimism  of  one  whose 


TOLSTOY  219 

vision  is  wholly  downward,  and  who  sees  only 
the  bleakness  of  earthlj'  life;  there  is  another  so- 
called  pessimism  of  one  whose  vision  is  ever  up- 
ward, and  to  whom,  therefore,  the  world  seems  a 
clog  on  his  progress  toward  perfect  happiness,  and 
such,  if  it  be  pessimism  at  all,  is  the  pessimism  of 
Buddha.  Only  a  reader  familiar  with  the  Buddh- 
ist books  can  have  any  notion  of  the  overwhelm- 
ing spirit  of  gladness  and  simple  charity  that 
pervades  them.  There  is  in  one  of  them  the  story 
of  a  prince  who  is  converted  and  leaves  the  luxury 
of  a  palace  to  join  the  brotherhood;  and  we  are 
told  that  in  the  night-time  the  brothers  heard  him 
walking  outside  in  the  grove  and  crying  to  him- 
self. Alio  !  Alio  !  for  his  joy  was  so  great  that  he 
could  not  sleep. 

In  a  word,  the  sadness  of  true  religion  is  nega- 
tive, the  joy  positive.  Faith  is  the  deliberate 
turning  of  the  eye  from  darkness  to  light.  If  the 
words  of  the  preacher  close  the  doors  in  our  breasts 
and  bring  to  us  a  contracted  feeling  of  depression, 
we  may  know  that  his  denunciation  of  the  world 
is  because  the  world  has  turned  to  ashes  in  his 
mouth  and  not  because  he  has  attained  to  any 
true  vision  of  the  peace  of  the  spirit. 

It  is  because  there  is  no  note  of  spiritual  joy  in 
Tolstoy  when  he  speaks  from  his  own  heart  and 
lays  aside  the  borrowed  jargon  of  Christianity, 
it  is  because  there  is  in  him  only  the  bitterness 
of  a  great  and  smitten  soul,  it  is  because  there 
is  in  him  no  charity  or  tenderness,  but  only  the 


220  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

bleakness  of  disillusion,  that  he  must  be  counted 
in  the  end  an  enemy  to  faith  and  not  an  upbuilder 
of  faith. 

I  have  dwelt  thus  at  length  on  Tolstoy's  theory 
of  the  new  art  and  on  his  religion  of  humanitari- 
anism  from  which  this  theory  springs  rather  than 
on  his  practice  of  art  as  shown  in  the  novel  Resur- 
rection^ because  his  theoretic  writing  seemed  to  me 
more  fruitful  and  suggestive,  and  because — let  me 
confess  it — the  novel  has  awakened  in  my  mind  a 
repugnance  strongly  at  variance  with  the  eulo- 
gistic reception  it  has  gained  at  large.  There  is 
undoubtedly  superabundant  force  in  the  book; 
there  is  the  visual  power,  so  common  in  Russian 
novels,  which  compels  the  reader  to  see  with  his 
own  eyes  what  the  author  describes;  there  is 
profound  skill  of  characterisation,  clothing  the 
persons  of  the  story  in  flesh  and  blood;  but  with 
all  this,  what  have  we  in  the  end  but  "  the  ex- 
pense of  spirit  in  a  waste  of  shame  "  ? 

It  would  be  an  easy  task  to  point  out  how  per- 
fectly the  novel  follows  the  author's  theory,  and 
how  completely  it  presents  him  as  a  decadent 
with  the  humanitarian  superimposed.  There  is 
the  same  utter  inability  to  perceive  beauty  as  con- 
nected  with  a  healthy  ideal  of  character,  and  a 
consequent  repudiation  of  beauty  altogether. 
There  is  the  same  morbid  brooding  on  sex  which 
lent  so  unsavoury  a  reputation  to  the  Kreutzer 
Sonata.  It  should  seem  that  the  author's  mind 
had  dwelt  so  persistently  and  intensely  on  this 


TOLSTOY  221 

subject  as  to  induce  a  sort  of  erotic  mania  taking 
the  form  at  once  of  a  horrid  attraction  and  repul- 
sion. We  are  sickened  in  the  same  waj'  with  end- 
less details  of  loathsome  description  that  are  made 
only  the  more  repellent  by  their  vividness;  nor 
can  I  see  how  the  fascination  of  such  scenes  as 
the  trial  and  the  prison  can  be  based  on  any 
worthier  motive  than  that  which  collects  a  crowd 
about  some  hideous  accident  of  the  street.  It  is 
not  science,  for  it  is  touched  with  morbid  emo- 
tionalism. It  is  not  true  art,  for  it  contains  no 
element  of  elevation.  It  is  not  right  preaching, 
for  it  degrades  human  nature  without  awakening 
any  compensating  spiritual  aspiration.  It  is, 
when  all  has  been  said,  the  same  spirit  of  unclean 
decadence  as  that  which  led  Baudelaire  to  write 
his  stanzas  on  U7ie  Charogne,  and  it  classes  Tol- 
stoy in  many  respects  with  that  corrupt  school 
which  he  so  heartily  detested.  The  travesty  of 
life  presented  in  the  book  may  be  explained — I  do 
not  know — by  the  barbarous  state  of  Russian 
civilisation.  The  coarseness  of  details,  however, 
may  well  be  charged  to  the  individual  mind  of  the 
man  who  while  describing  in  his  memoirs  the 
burial  of  his  own  mother  dilates  on  the  odour  of 
the  body.  This  is  not  a  pleasant  fact  to  mention, 
but  is  in  itself  worth  a  volume  of  argument. 
Christianity  was  thrust  uj^on  the  Northern  hea- 
then at  the  point  of  sword  and  pike:  it  should  seem 
as  if  this  propagator  of  liumanitarianism  was  bent 
on  making  converts  by  trampling  under  foot  all 


222  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

the  finer  feelings  and  fairer  instincts,  all  the  de- 
corum and  suavity,  of  human  nature. 

Such,  at  present  is  the  most  notable  phase  of 
the  ancient  feud,  so  far  at  least  as  it  concerns  lit- 
erature; and  from  the  horns  of  this  dilemma — the 
mockery  of  art  for  art's  sake  on  one  side,  and  on 
the  other  the  dubious  and  negative  virtue  of  the 
humanitarians — I  find  no  way  of  escape,  unless 
the  world  discovers  again  some  positive  ideal 
which  beauty  can  serve.  And  if  you  say  that  this 
conflict  is  only  one  phase  of  an  ever  changing  and 
never  solved  antinomy  of  human  nature,  and  that 
the  conception  of  the  good  and  beautiful  was  an 
empty  word  of  the  philosophers,  certainly  I  shall 
not  attempt  to  answer  in  terms  of  logic,  for  I  my- 
self have  been  too  long  haunted  by  a  similar 
doubt.  And  yet  I  seem  to  see  dimly  and  figura- 
tively the  shadow  of  a  solution.  Call  it  a  dream 
if  you  will;  but  what  else  was  the  vision  of  Jacob 
when  he  lay  asleep  and  beheld  a  ladder  stretching 
from  the  earth  to  the  sky?  or  the  journey  of 
Dante  up  the  Mountain  of  Purgatory  and  from 
planet  to  planet?  or  Dionysius's  doctrine  of  the 
hierarchy  of  angels  and  principalities  and  powers 
reaching  in  unbroken  succession  from  man  to  the 
Supreme  Being  ? 

Somewhere  in  that  same  visionary  land  I  beheld 
a  great  mountain,  whose  foot  was  in  a  valley  of 
eternal  shadows,  and  whose  head  was  lost  in  the 
splendour  of  the  pure  empyrean.  At  first  the  eye 
was  bewildered  and  could  see  only  the  strange 


TOLSTOY  223 

contrast  of  the  gloom  below  and  the  whiteness 
above;  but  as  I  looked  longer,  I  discerned  a  path 
that  stretched  from  one  to  the  other  up  the  whole 
length  of  the  slope,  uniting  them  by  gradual 
changes  of  light  and  shade.  On  this  pathway- 
were  countless  human  souls,  some  toiling  up- 
ward, others  lightly  descending,  but  none  paus- 
ing, for  there  seemed  to  be  at  work  within  them 
some  principle  of  unrest  which  forever  impelled 
them  this  way  or  that.  And  their  journey  was  a 
strange  and  mystic  pilgrimage,  through  ever 
varying  scenes,  between  the  deep  abyss  far  below, 
where  monstrous  creatures  like  the  first  uncertain 
births  of  Chaos  wallowed  in  the  slime  and  dark- 
ness, and  high  above  the  regions  made  dim  with 
excess  of  light,  where  in  the  full  noonday  figures 
of  transcendent  glory  seemed  to  move.  And  I 
saw  that  of  all  the  pilgrims  a  few  lifted  their  eyes 
aloft  to  the  great  white  light,  and  were  so  rav- 
ished by  its  radiance  that  the  objects  before  their 
feet  were  as  if  they  did  not  exist.  And  of  these 
few  one  here  and  there  pressed  on  valiantly  and  in 
time  was  himself  rapt  from  view  into  the  upper 
radiance;  but  the  others  were  blinded  by  the  light, 
and  lost  their  foothold,  and  were  hurled  headlong 
into  the  loathsome  valley.  And  I  saw  a  few  others 
whose  eyes  turned  by  some  horrid  fascination  to 
the  abyss  itself,  and  thither  they  rushed  madly, 
heedless  of  every  allurement  by  the  way.  But 
by  far  the  greater  number  kept  their  regard 
fixed  modestly  on  the  path  just  above  or  below, 


224  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

according  as  the  spirit  within  led  them  to  ascend  or 
descend.  And  these  seemed  to  walk  ever  in  a  kind 
of  earthly  paradise;  for  the  light,  streaming  down 
from  the  empyrean  and  tempered  to  their  vision 
by  wont,  fell  upon  the  trees  by  the  roadside  and 
on  the  flowering  shrubs  innumerable  and  on  the 
mountain  brooks,  and  gilded  all  with  wonderful 
and  inexpressible  beauty.  And  those  that  gazed 
above  were  filled  with  such  joy  at  the  fresh  world 
before  them  that  they  climbed  ever  upward  and 
never  rested,  for  always  some  scene  still  fairer 
lured  them  on.  And  as  they  climbed,  the  light 
grew  brighter  and  more  clear,  and  the  path  more 
beautiful  and  easier  to  ascend,  and  so  without 
seeming  toil  or  peril  they  too  passed  from  sight. 
But  those  others  who  cast  their  eyes  on  the  path- 
way below  were  drawn  in  the  same  way  by  the 
beauty  of  the  scene  where  the  golden  light  glanced 
on  the  trees;  and  with  much  ease  and  satisfaction 
to  themselves  they  paced  down  and  still  down- 
ward, following  the  shifting  vision  and  dallying 
with  pleasure  on  the  way,  and  never  observed  how 
the  light  was  growing  dimmer  and  the  road  more 
precipitous,  until  losing  balance  they  were  thrown 
headlong  into  the  noisome  valley. 

So  the  division  and  conflict  of  human  nature 
appeared  to  me  in  a  parable;  but  whether  the 
vision  had  any  meaning  or  was  only  an  idle  fancy, 
1  do  not  know. 


THE  REI.IGIOUS  GROUND  OF  HUMANI- 
TARIANISM 

No  writer  of  the  present  day  has  discussed  the 
intricate  problem  of  social  evolution  more  logically 
than  Mr.  Mallock,  and  even  his  enemies  will  ad- 
mit that  his  Aristocracy  and  Evolution  presents  a 
strong  plea  in  favour  of  the  so-called  "  great-man 
theory"  against  the  claims  of  socialism  and  of 
those  theories  generally  that  would  sink  the  indi- 
vidual in  the  mass.  Mr.  Mallock' s  argument,  re- 
duced to  the  briefest  terms,  is  simply  this:  Social 
science  attempts  to  answer  two  distinct  sets  of 
questions;  and  one  set — namely,  the  speculative 
— it  has  answered  with  great  success;  it  has  failed 
only  in  attempting  to  answer  practical  questions. 

The  phenomena  with  which  it  has  dealt  suc- 
cessfully are  phenomena  of  social  aggregates  con- 
sidered as  wholes;  but  the  practical  problems  of 
to-day,  with  which  it  has  dealt  unsuccessfully, 
arise  out  of  the  conflict  between  different  parts  of 
the  same  aggregate.  Social  science  has  failed  as 
a  practical  guide  because  it  has  not  recognised 
this  distinction.  The  conflict  between  the  parts 
of  an  aggregate  arises  from  inequalities  of  posi- 
tion.    These  social  inequalities  are  partly  due  to 

IS 

225 


226  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

circumstances;  but  most  people  will  admit  that 
congenital  inequalities  in  talent  have  much  to  do 
with  these  social  inequalities.  The  condemnation 
of  the  great- man  theory  is  a  removal  of  all  con- 
genital inequalities  from  the  field  of  study.  It 
may  be  asked  what  place  the  great  man  has  in  an 
exclusively  evolutionary  theory  of  progress.  The 
reply  is  that  the  fittest  survivor  is  not  the  same  as 
the  great  man.  He  plays  a  part  in  progress, 
but  not  the  same  part.  The  fittest  men,  by  sur- 
viving, raise  the  general  level  of  the  race  and 
promote  progress  in  this  way.  The  great  man 
promotes  progress  by  being  superior  to  his  co- 
temporaries.  The  movement  of  progress  is 
double;  one  movement  being  verj'  slow,  the  other 
rapid.  The  survival  of  the  fittest  causes  the  slow 
movement;  the  rapid  movement  is  caused  by  the 
great  man.  Mr.  Mallock's  argument  then  pro- 
ceeds to  show  how  the  great  man — that  is,  the 
man  of  exceptional  abilities  in  any  one  field,  often 
a  very  narrow  field — working  through  the  law  of 
competition  renders  the  labour  of  the  masses  more 
efficient  by  his  directive  power,  and  thus  increases 
the  general  well-being.  And  the  only  possible 
incentive  to  induce  the  great  man  to  enter  into 
this  arena  of  material  competition  is  the  material 
rewards  such  as  he  now  receives  in  the  world. 

It  is  of  course  a  manifest  injustice  to  condense 
the  argument  of  a  large  volume,  with  all  its 
wealth  of  illustration  and  rebuttal,  to  the  limits 
of  a  paragraph;  but  such  an  act  may  be  justified 


HUMANITARIANISM  22/ 

in  the  present  case  because  our  purpose  is  to  at- 
tempt neither  the  refutation  nor  the  support  of 
socialism  on  economic  grounds,  but  to  examine 
the  question  from  quite  a  different  point  of  view. 
To  our  mind  Mr.  Mallock's  theory  is  correct  so 
far  as  it  goes,  and  we  presume  that  most  persons 
of  intelligence  will  admit  the  strength  of  his 
reasoning  if  only  economic  grounds  are  considered 
and,  what  is  more  important,  if  only  the  competi- 
tive side  of  human  nature  is  taken  into  account. 
But  just  here  we  see  the  weak  point  of  his  argu- 
ment. A  person  may  well  retort:  Mr.  Mallock's 
theory,  as  you  maintain,  is  true  so  far  as  it  goes; 
but  it  professedly  touches  only  the  worldly  and 
materialistic  element  of  human  nature.  The  law 
of  competition  will  necessarily  produce  such  a 
state  of  society  as  he  describes;  but  the  law  of 
competition,  while  perfectl}^  valid  in  the  lower 
stages  of  civilisation,  takes  no  account  of  what 
may  be  called  the  religious  or  humanitarian  in- 
stinct of  man;  and  it  is  just  this  higher  instinct 
which  introduces  a  new  factor  into  human  pro- 
gress and  makes  possible  the  claims  of  socialism. 
I  say  "  religious  or  humanitarian  instinct"  pur- 
po.sely,  for  it  must  be  perfectly  clear  to  any  one 
who  looks  abroad  that  religion  to-day,  so  far  as  it 
is  a  vital  force,  has  very  little  to  do  with  the  sal- 
vation of  individual  souls  and  very  much  to  do 
with  the  regeneration  of  society  as  an  organised 
body.  The  brotherhood  of  man  is  the  real  re- 
ligious dogma  of  the  times.     We  wish  to  consider 


228  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

briefly  the  force  of  this  religious  ground  of  social- 
ism,— we  should  rather  say  huraanitarianism,  for 
our  concern  is  not  with  the  specific  political  pro- 
gramme of  the  socialists,  properly  so-called,  but 
with  that  ever-growing  behef  in  the  equality  and 
brotherhood  of  man  which  is  equally  responsible 
for  the  nihilism  of  Tolstoy  and  the  collectivism 
of  Karl  Marx.  If  these  claims  are  found  to  be 
empty,  it  should  seem  that  there  remains  for  us 
only  to  put  away  our  dream  of  a  regenerated  so- 
ciety and  of  universal  happiness,  and  to  make  the 
best  of  the  old  order  of  things  where  justice  seems 
to  our  blinded  vision  to  walk  hand  in  hand  with 
the  unequal  fates. 

And  first  of  all  it  is  necessary  to  examine  more 
carefully  what  is  meant  by  the  religious  instinct 
and  to  separate  it  from  misleading  overgrowths; 
for  evidently  Christianity — to  confine  ourselves 
for  the  moment  to  that  form  of  belief— as  taught 
and  practised  to-day  is  a  mingling  of  the  religious 
instinct  with  worldly  poHcy.  We  mean  nothing 
invidious  by  worldly  policy;  but  simply  that  the 
religion  of  Christ,  as  it  spread  and  became  a 
factor  of  civilisation,  necessarily  assumed  a  formal 
policy  and  government — that  it  became  a  Church, 
Neither  in  its  Catholic  nor  in  its  Protestant  form 
has  the  Church  lent  itself  to  any  promulgation  or 
protection  of  socialistic  ideas  of  equality;  and  for 
this  reason  the  organised  Church  has  been  bit- 
terly attacked  by  Socialists  and  social  reformers 
generally— most  bitterly  of  all  perhaps  by  Tolstoy, 


HUMANITARIANISM  229 

who  finds  in  it  the  ultimate  cause  of  the  wide- 
spread misery  which  the  new  acceptance  of  hu- 
man brotherhood  is  to  annul.  Indeed  many- 
Christians — and  among  them  Tolstoy — assert  that 
the  organised  Church  stands  in  direct  opposition 
to  the  plain  teaching  of  Jesus,  and  that  the  chief 
need  of  the  world  to-day  is  to  throw  off  these 
outer  trappings  of  worldliness  and  to  approach 
once  more  the  original  message  of  the  Gospel. 
"We  are  compelled,  then,  to  disregard  the  policy 
of  the  Church,  whether  Catholic  or  Protestant, 
and  to  turn  back  to  the  pure  voice  of  religion, 
which  in  the  words  of  the  great  prophets  appeals 
more  or  less  authoritatively  to  the  hearts  of  all 
men;  for  here,  if  anywhere,  lies  the  only  valid 
basis  of  that  much-vaunted  regenerating  belief  in 
the  brotherhood  and  equality  of  men.  There  can 
certainly  be  no  surer  and  clearer  way  of  discover- 
ing the  oracles  of  this  pure  religion  than  by  going 
to  the  words  and  example  of  Christ  himself.  For 
the  Christian  this  will  be  sufficient;  for  those  of 
more  questioning  mind  it  may  be  proper  to  rein- 
force the  teaching  of  Christ  with  the  doctrine  of 
Buddha.  He  would  be  a  rash  man  who  should 
seek  the  mandates  of  religion  outside  of  the  realm 
in  which  these  two  greatest  apostles  of  the  West 
and  of  the  East  stand  in  concord. 

At  the  outset  of  any  attempt  to  discover  the 
actual  doctrine  of  Christ  we  are,  however,  met  by 
a  difficulty  which  must  be  frankly  confessed  and 
set  down  for  whatever  weight  it  may  have.     Only 


230  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

those  who  have  gone  to  the  Gospels  without  any 
preconvictions  of  what  they  were  to  find  know 
how  hard  it  is  to  discover  the  real  position  of 
Christ.  Single  texts  may  be  quoted,  and  indeed 
have  been  quoted,  to  justify  every  variety  of 
creed;  and  I  can  see  no  way  through  the  diffi- 
culties except  to  form  an  opinion  from  the  general 
consensus  of  Christ's  acts  and  words. 

It  will  help  us  if  we  discriminate  among  the 
various  elements  of  rehgion  that  enter  into  Chris- 
tianity. Thus  there  is  one  phase  of  Christianity 
which  may  be  called  the  purely  spiritual  and 
which  it  possesses  with  all  higher  cults.  This 
phase  cannot  better  be  expressed  than  in  the 
three  words  of  St.  Paul,  Faith,  Hope,  and  Love. 
We  are  not  here  dealing  with  faith  in  a  peculiar 
dogma  or  person  which  may  vary  with  varying 
creeds,  but  with  that  faculty  of  the  mind  or  soul 
which  turns  instinctively  to  the  things  of  the 
spirit.  And  so  in  regard  to  hope,  we  mean  simply 
a  state  of  joyous  trust  that  somehow  to  the  faith- 
ful all  things  in  the  end  shall  be  good.  And  in 
love  we  refer  to  no  specific  commands,  but  to  that 
sympathetic  attitude  of  the  observing  soul  which 
is  ready  to  accept  and  make  a  portion  of  its  own 
life  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  the  world.  It  is  at 
bottom  the  desire  of  the  soul  to  become  one  with 
all  it  perceives  akin  to  itself.  These  three  form 
the  spiritual  basis  of  all  religion;  and  it  is  not 
necessary  to  say  how  abundantly  they  are  held 
forth  in  the  Gospels.     But  faith,  hope,  and  love, 


HUMANITARIANISM  23I 

in  this  spiritual  sense,  have  no  direct  bearing  on 
the  social  question  we  are  here  considering.  They 
are  the  fountainhead  of  Christianity,  as  of  every 
religion,  and  flow  down  through  all  its  manifesta- 
tions; but  they  are  of  the  spirit  and  not  of  this 
world.  Even  love,  which  at  first  might  seem 
corroborative  of  humanitarian  equality  and  is  no 
doubt  so  interpreted,  is  in  this  spiritual  sense  a 
state  of  mind,  not  a  rule  of  action.  To  do  what 
is  best  for  our  neighbour,  we  must  first  be  told 
what  is  best  for  him.  And  besides  it  applies  as 
much  to  our  feeling  toward  the  dumb  beasts  as  to 
our  fellow- men. 

And  so  at  the  other  end  of  Christianity  there 
lies  a  law  which  is  common  practically  to  human- 
ity and  which  has  no  bearing  on  the  question  at 
issue.  This  is  that  universal  code  of  prohibitive 
morality  found  in  the  Decalogue  and  in  large  part 
repeated  and  reinforced  by  Christ:  Thou  shalt  not 
kill.  Thou  shalt  not  steal,  etc. 

But  between  these  two  extremes  of  spiritual 
outreaching  and  negative  morality  lies  a  common 
ground  where  the  two  orders  meet  together  and 
produce  a  body  of  positive  or  spiritual  morality 
which  bears  directly  on  constructive  sociology. 
It  is  this  ground  that  we  are  to  investigate  more 
narrowly  in  the  doctrine  of  Christ. 

If  we  turn  to  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  which 
surely  represents  the  teaching  of  Christ  in  its 
purest  form,  we  are  met  in  the  beginning  by 
the  promulgation  of  a  virtue  distinctly  medial  in 


232  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

character  between  the  aspirations  of  the  spirit  and 
the  prohibitions  of  the  flesh.  This  is  that  virtue 
of  humility  so  often  enounced  by  Christ  and  so 
strikingly  exhibited  in  his  own  life:  Blessed  are 
the  poor  in  spirit;  Blessed  are  they  that  mourn; 
Blessed  are  the  meek!  It  would  be  quite  super- 
fluous to  dwell  at  length  on  this  teaching  of  the 
Son  of  Man,  who  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto 
but  to  minister,  and  who  suffered  voluntarily  the 
humiliation  of  the  cross.  He  never  ceased  to  de- 
clare that  he  who  would  save  his  life  should  lose 
it,  and  that  he  who  would  be  first  should  be  last. 
Probably  the  one  feature  that  most  radically  dis- 
tinguishes Christianity  from  other  religions  is  this 
peculiar  emphasis  and  reiteration  of  the  lesson  of 
humihty.  Something  very  much  akin  to  it  in  its 
results  may  be  found  elsewhere,  notably  in  Buddh- 
ism as  we  shall  see;  but  nowhere  else  has  the 
high  formulative  virtue  just  the  same  mark  of 
personal  poignancy  which  is  felt  in  Christian 
humility. 

Closely  related  to  humility  and  following  it  as 
an  immediate  corollary  is  that  other  virtue  of  non- 
resistance.  Count  Tolstoy  in  one  of  his  powerful 
but  unbalanced  lay  sermons  tells  us  how  a  learned 
Jew,  with  whom  he  was  discussing,  traced  every 
precept  of  Christianity  back  to  Hebrew  traditions 
— except  this  one  precept  of  non-resistance;  and  it 
is  known  that  Tolstoy  himself  would  build  upon 
this  rock  the  whole  fabric  of  his  reform.  Such 
an  attitude  is  doubtless  the  extravagance  of  a 


HUMANITARIANISM  233 

fanatical  mind  and  further  contains  within  itself — 
as  I  shall  attempt  to  prove — the  mischievous  error 
of  assuming  as  a  universal  law  what  was  meant  to 
be  a  rule  for  an  elect  few.  Yet  I  cannot  see  how 
any  candid  inquirer  can  study  the  words  and  life 
of  Christ  without  acknowledging  that  the  precept 
of  non-resistance  was  intended  to  be  taken  literally 
and  absolutely  by  those  to  whom  it  was  given. 
Blessed  are  the  peace-makers,  he  says,  and  blessed 
are  they  which  are  persecuted  for  righteousness' 
sake.  And  again,  in  the  same  discourse,  he 
enounces  the  rule  with  careful  precision:  "  Resist 
not  evil;  but  whosoever  shall  smite  thee  on  thy 
right  cheek,  turn  to  him  the  other  also.  And  if 
any  man  will  sue  thee  at  law,  and  take  away  thy 
coat,  let  him  have  thy  cloak  also."  This  virtue 
of  non-resistance  is  no  more  than  the  essential 
and  inevitable  flower  of  that  humility  which  so 
distinguishes  Christianity.  And  throughout  those 
last  days  of  trial  and  humiliation  the  Saviour 
never  once  ofifered  the  least  resistance  to  his 
persecutors. 

Not  far  removed  in  character  from  non-resistance, 
and  like  it  consequent  on  the  doctrine  of  humility, 
stands  the  ideal  of  perfect  poverty.  Here  at  once 
we  enter  upon  ground  that  trenches  on  socio- 
logical questions,  and  unfortunately  no  statement 
can  be  made  quite  so  categorical  as  in  the  case  of 
humility  and  non-resistance.  Yet  again  a  candid 
consideration  of  the  preaching  and  example  of 
Christ  must,  I  think,  lead  to  the  conclusion  that 


234  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

he  wished  his  disciples  to  eschew  the  possession 
of  all  property  including  even  what  we  should  call 
the  necessaries  of  life.  "  Where  your  treasure  is, 
there  will  your  heart  be  also,"  he  declared,  and 
seemed  to  feel  that  the  pursuit  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  was  too  urgent  to  admit  even  the  least 
temporising  with  the  interests  of  this  world;  for 
ye  cannot  serve  God  and  mammon.  So  when  he 
sent  forth  his  disciples  to  preach,  he  bade  them 
take  neither  gold  nor  scrip  for  their  journey,  nor 
two  coats.  And  in  the  case  of  the  rich  young 
man  whom  Jesus  loved,  the  last  command  was  to 
sell  all  that  he  had  and  to  separate  himself  from 
the  world.  However  repugnant  to  modern  no- 
tions this  rule  of  absolute  poverty  may  be,  yet  it 
certainly  contains  an  element  of  real  beauty. 
"  Therefore  I  say  unto  you.  Take  no  thought  for 
your  life,  what  ye  shall  eat,  or  what  ye  shall 
drink;  nor  yet  for  your  bod}^  what  ye  shall  put 
on;  "  and  thereupon  follows  that  most  exquisite 
parable  of  the  fowls  of  the  air  and  the  lilies  of  the 
field,  which  has  lingered  on  through.  Christian  art 
and  poetry.  "  Take  therefore  no  thought  for  the 
morrow:  for  the  morrow  shall  take  thought  for 
the  things  of  itself.  Sufficient  unto  the  day  is  the 
evil  thereof."  And  despite  the  abuses  which 
arose  in  the  begging  orders  from  their  pretensions 
to  follow  this  rule  of  poverty,  the  precept  did  now 
and  then  bring  forth  the  highest  and  purest 
type  of  Christian  character.  Search  the  annals  of 
the  Church  and  you  will  find  no  one  who  walked 


HUMANITARIANISM  235 

nearer  than  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  to  the  supreme 
model  of  holy  living.  Protestant  and  Catholic 
alike  must  admit  this ;  and  poverty  with  St. 
Francis  was  a  passion  no  less  exigent  for  spiritual 
growth  than  humility  and  chastity;  and  the  fol- 
lowing of  this  austere  law  created  in  him  that  same 
saintl}'  joy  and  that  same  exquisite  beauty  of  sym- 
pathy with  all  sentient  beings  of  which  we  catch 
glimpses  in  the  story  of  Jesus. 

The  name  of  St.  Francis  brings  us  to  the  last 
and  in  some  respects  most  important  of  those  vir- 
tues which  lie  between  the  aspirations  of  pure 
spirituality  and  the  commands  of  prohibitive 
morality, — I  mean  the  much  disputed  virtue  of 
chastity.  I  have  heard  one  who  was  both  a  man 
of  the  world  and  a  philosopher  avow  that  self-re- 
spect and  a  regard  for  happiness  in  the  higher 
sense  of  the  word  might  provoke  in  the  heart 
every  renunciation  except  this  one  habit  of  chas- 
tity. That  is  merely  to  say  that  chastity, 
considered  as  a  law  which  regulates  the  very 
imaginations  of  the  heart,  is  something  more 
than  a  mere  prohibition;  it  is  a  supplanting  of  the 
earthly  life  by  the  desires  and  aspirations  of  the 
spirit.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  Church  from 
a  very  early  age  looked  upon  chastity  as  the 
crowning  glory  of  the  religious  life;  even  St.  Paul 
seems  to  have  regarded  it  as  a  desirable,  but  not 
always  possible,  state  for  those  who  dedicated 
themselves  to  holiness.  I  am  willing  to  admit, 
however,  that  the  position  of  Christ  himself  in  the 


236  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

matter  is  open  to  some  ambiguity.  I  remember 
his  action  at  the  marriage  feast  of  Cana,  and  again 
his  saying,  always  so  solemnly  repeated  at  mar- 
riages to-day:  "  What  therefore  God  hath  joined 
together,  let  not  man  put  asunder."  Yet  it  is 
probable  that  this  was  no  more  than  a  concession 
to  the  world,  a  hesitancy  to  push  matters  spiritual 
into  regions  where  they  do  not  belong,  the  appeal 
of  charity  pleading  for  the  beauty  and  innocence 
of  a  life  which  in  his  austerer  moments  he  reso- 
lutely condemned.  For  herein  lies  the  burning 
question  of  religion  and  the  world.  If,  as  the 
deeper  voice  of  inspiration  proclaims  within  us 
when  the  breast  is  calm,  this  earthly  existence  is 
a  station  of  groaning  and  travailling,  then  the  one 
purpose  of  religion  is  to  lift  us  out  of  the  world 
altogether,  and  the  allurement  of  love  is  the  last 
snare  to  be  avoided,  the  last  illusion  to  be  dissi- 
pated, the  more  perilous  because  of  its  mask  of 
beauty.  As  for  Christ  it  is  at  least  apparent  that 
he  regarded  chastity  as  the  simplest  and  best  state 
for  those  who  were  to  be  his  immediate  followers. 
He  himself  did  not  always  abstain  from  the  pleas- 
ures of  life  and  men  accused  him  of  being  a  wine- 
bibber  and  a  glutton;  yet  he  thought  it  necessary 
for  his  mission  to  abjure  all  family  bonds.  When 
these  ties  were  pressed  upon  him,  he  replied 
sternly :  ' '  Who  is  my  mother  ?  and  who  are  my 
brethren?"  And  to  his  disciples  he  said:  "If 
any  man  come  to  me,  and  hate  not  his  father,  and 
mother    .     .     .    yea,  and  his  own  life  also,  he 


HUMANITARIANISM  237 

cannot  be  my  disciple. ' '  So  far,  however,  chastity 
may  be  set  down  as  a  mere  matter  of  expediency 
more  or  less  urgent  upon  those  who  were  to  give 
themselves  up  to  the  exigencies  of  a  missionary 
career;  but  it  is  possible,  I  think,  to  go  further 
than  that  and  to  say  that  Christ  looked  upon 
chastity  as  the  last  act  of  spiritual  faith  or  dominion 
in  the  religious  path.  His  various  words  on  the 
relation  of  the  sexes  seem  to  imply  this  thought 
as  their  deeper  content.  In  one  case  he  is  re- 
ported to  have  spoken  more  explicitly:  "There 
be  eunuchs,  which  have  made  themselves  eunuchs 
for  the  kingdom  of  heaven's  sake;  "  and  again  he 
declared  that  "  in  the  resurrection  they  neither 
marry  nor  are  given  in  marriage."  Such  state- 
ments as  these,  though  isolated  in  the  Gospels, 
when  taken  with  the  general  tendency  of  Christ's 
teaching  and  with  the  wide  and  early  doctrine  of 
the  Church,  have  considerable  weight;  and  if  in 
addition  to  this  we  consider  the  experience  of  men 
throughout  the  world  who  have  sought  the  inner 
sanctuary  of  holiness,  the  law  may  be  accepted,  I 
think,  as  final. 

In  these  four  virtues  (or  three,  if  we  choose  to 
omit  chastity)  is  contained  the  strictly  religious 
or  spiritual  teaching  of  Christ  as  it  bears  on  the 
social  aspect  of  life.  The  law  of  love,  which 
might  at  first  seem  to  demand  inclusion,  is  in 
reality  something  much  deeper  and  wider  than 
these  social  virtues.  It  is  akin  to  the  power  of 
faith  and  hope  which  seizes  upon  spiritual  things; 


238  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

it  is  a  state  of  the  soul  and  only  by  extension  is 
concerned  with  our  individual  life  among  men. 
To  reach  the  source  and  home  of  this  pure  virtue 
of  love  we  must,  as  Emerson  wrote,  mount  above 
the  bonds  of  earthly  life 

Into  vision  where  all  form 

In  one  only  form  dissolves; 

In  a  region  where  the  wheel 

On  which  all  beings  ride 

Visibly  revolves; 

Where  the  starred,  eternal  worm 

Girds  the  world  with  bound  and  term; 

Where  unlike  things  are  like; 

Where  good  and  ill, 

And  joy  and  moan, 

Melt  into  one. 

It  is,  to  be  sure,  this  high  charity,  to  use  its  older 
name,  that  pervades  the  four  religious  virtues, 
giving  them  their  tone  and  beauty,  and  binding 
them  to  the  spiritual  life;  it  is  the  essence  even  of 
the  prohibitive  law;  but  it  is  not  specific  in  any 
such  sense  as  humility,  poverty,  non-resistance, 
and  chastity  are  specific. 

We  may  be  confirmed  in  accepting  these  virtues 
as  the  cardinal  doctrine  of  Christ  who  to  the 
Western  world  stands  as  the  inspired  exemplar  of 
the  religious  instinct,  by  turning  for  a  moment 
to  the  great  prophet  of  the  Orient.  I  have  not 
the  desire  to  examine  here  in  much  detail  the 
Buddhistic  doctrine.  Nor  is  such  an  examination 
necessary;  for,  whether  we  regard  Buddhism  as 


HUMANITARIANISM  239 

the  equal  or  the  inferior  of  Christianity,  it  at  least 
has  the  good  fortune  of  presenting  to  us  in  the 
Pali  books  a  more  consistent  and  more  amply 
logical  body  of  dogma  than  the  Gospels.  This  is 
chiefly  due  to  the  fact  that  Buddhism  appeals 
more  to  the  reason  and  less  to  the  emotions  than 
Christianity. 

We  may  pass  over  the  Buddhistic  conception  of 
faith,  hope,  and  love,  with  the  remark  that  they 
are  as  essential  there  as  in  Christianity,  though 
of  course  somewhat  different  in  tone.  Nor  need 
we  discuss  the  prohibitive  commands  of  Buddhism 
which  are  substantially  the  same  as  the  Jewish. 
To  his  closer  followers  (who  were  organised  by  him 
into  something  like  the  monastic  order)  Buddha 
taught  a  system  of  higher  morality  which,  so  far 
at  least  as  it  bears  on  social  relations,  was  strik- 
ingly like  that  of  Christ. 

Humility,  to  be  sure,  in  the  precise  Christian 
sense  of  the  word  cannot  be  called  a  Hindu  idea; 
yet  the  starting-point  of  Buddhism  depends  on  a 
state  of  mind  not  entirely  dissimilar  to  it.  Chris- 
tian humility  is  associated  with  a  feeling  of  self- 
debasement  of  the  sinfiil  soul  standing  before  a 
perfectly  righteous  judge  who  rewards  and  con- 
demns as  one  man  judges  another.  This  peculi- 
arly emotional  quality  Buddhistic  renunciation 
does  not  possess,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the 
Buddhist  acknowledges  no  personal  and  eternal 
God.  But  in  one  respect  the  two  forms  of  renun- 
ciation approach  each  other.     The  self- debasement 


240  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

of  the  Christian  was  for  the  purpose  of  receiving 
finally  a  crown  of  glory;  it  was  a  putting  away 
of  the  lower  nature,  of  the  old  Adam  within  the 
breast,  that  the  higher  nature  might  grow  and,  in 
accordance  with  mystic  views  early  developed  in 
the  Church,  be  absorbed  in  the  perfect  holiness  of 
Christ.  Take  out  of  this  the  relation  of  the  soul 
to  a  personal  Saviour,  and  the  Buddhist  conception 
of  humility,  or  self-abnegation,  is  obtained.  In  one 
of  the  Pali  books  Buddha  distinguishes  between 
the  cravings  of  the  lower  and  higher  natures 
in  a  manner  that  throws  light  on  this  similarity. 

There'  are  two  cravings,  O  priests;  the  noble  one, 
and  the  ignoble  one.  And  what,  O  priests,  is  the  ignoble 
craving  ?  "We  may  have,  O  priests,  the  case  of  one  who, 
himself  subject  to  birth,  craves  what  is  subject  to  birth; 
himself  subject  to  old  age,  craves  what  is  subject  to  old 
age;  himself  subject  to  disease,  ,  .  .  death,  .  .  . 
sorrow,  .  .  .  corruption,  .  .  .  craves  what  is 
subject  to  corruption.  .  .  .  And  what,  O  priests, 
is  the  noble  craving  ?  We  may  have,  O  priests,  the  case 
of  one  who,  himself  subject  to  birth,  perceives  the 
wretchedness  of  what  is  subject  to  birth,  and  craves  the 
incomparable  security  of  a  Nirvana  free  from  birth; 
himself  subject  to  old  age,  .  .  .  disease,  .  .  . 
death,  .  .  .  sorrow,  .  .  .  corruption,  perceives  the 
wretchedness  of  what  is  subject  to  corruption,  and  craves 
the  incomparable  security  of  a  Nirvana  free  from  cor- 
ruption. 

Here  lies  the  gist  of  the  matter.     The  fashion 

of  this  world  passeth  away;  what  is  born  must 

'  Translated  by  Henry  C.  Warren. 


HUMANITARIANISM  24I 

perish;  all  things  are  impermanent,  and  most  im- 
permanent of  all  is  that  peculiar  combination  of 
desires  and  repulsions  which  we  call  a  man's  per- 
sonal soul.  He  who  would  obtain  salvation, 
according  to  Hindu  ideas,  must  deliberately  put 
away  the  personal  self  and  look  for  a  state  of  peace 
and  deliverance  surpassing  in  joy  the  conception 
of  heavenly  rewards: 

The  strong  gods  pine  for  my  abode, 
And  pine  in  vain  the  sacred  Seven; 

But  thou,  meek  lover  of  the  good! 
Find  me,  and  turn  thy  back  on  heaven. 

It  is  unfortunate  (for  us  at  least  of  the  Western 
world  who  would  approach  Buddhism  intelli- 
gently) that  the  name  of  this  condition  of  salva- 
tion, the  word  "Nirvana,"  should  contain  only 
the  negative  idea  of  the  snufl&ng  out  of  the  lower 
cravings  as  a  candle  flame  is  blown  out,  and 
should  omit  the  positive  idea  of  joy  which  for  the 
true  Buddhist  this  state  signifies.  If  the  word  is 
negative,  that  is  merely  because  the  positive 
aspect  of  deliverance  cannot  be  expressed  in 
rational  language.  The  identity  of  Nirvana  with 
nihilism  is  a  fatuity  strongly  condemned  by 
Buddha  himself.  In  relation  to  the  higher  crav- 
ing of  the  heart  this  self-abnegation  of  the  Buddh- 
ist is  then  not  unlike  Cliristian  humility.  Nor 
is  its  bearing  on  the  social  life  of  man  much  differ- 
ent from  that  of  its  Christian  congener;  tliey  both 
lead  to  a  contempt  for  the  conflict  of  worldly 


242  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

ambitions,  and  to  a  certain  self-withdrawal  before 
the  impertinent  demands  of  society. 

It  is  easy  therefore  to  see  how  the  virtues  fol- 
lowing such  a  guidance  should  be  ascetic  in  their 
nature.  Non-resistance  in  Buddhism  was  ex- 
tended to  the  forbidding  of  all  violence  whatso- 
ever, and  life  even  of  the  lowest  orders  was  held 
sacred.  There  are  many  stories  in  the  Pali  books 
setting  forth  the  beauty  of  absolute  submission  to 
violence  and  malice.  One  well-known  stanza  in 
which  the  idea  of  non-resistance  is  fully  expressed, 
it  may  not  be  amiss  to  quote  here.  "  *  He  has 
abused  me,  he  has  struck  me,  he  has  oppressed 
me,  he  has  robbed  me,' — those  who  harbour  such 
thoughts  fail  to  put  an  end  to  enmity.  '  He  has 
abused  me,  he  has  struck  me,  he  has  oppressed 
me,  he  has  robbed  me,' — those  who  do  not  har- 
bour such  thoughts,  they  put  an  end  to  enmity." 
Strict  poverty  also  was  enjoined.  The  disciple 
was  allowed  only  eight  possessions:  an  alms-bowl, 
razor,  needle,  belt,  water-strainer,  and  three  robes. 
Neither  the  community  nor  the  individual  monk 
could  own  money,  and  food  was  obtained  only  by 
begging.  Absolute  chastity  was  prescribed,  and 
all  family  ties  were  severed  in  order  that  no  im- 
pediment might  remain  in  the  path  of  enlighten- 
ment. 

Despite  some  difference  of  emotional  tone  the 
religious  codes  of  Christ  and  Buddha,  as  they 
touch  on  vital  social  questions,  are  thus  seen  to 
be  in  unison;  and  where  these  two  leaders  of  the 


HUMANITARIANISM  243 

West  and  of  the  East  agree  so  perfectly,  I  am 
content  to  believe  that  the  religious  instinct  has 
been  voiced  in  its  greatest  puritj'.  What  then 
shall  we  say  to  those  who  in  the  specific  gospel  of 
Christ  seek  to  find  a  law  that  shall  supplant  the 
long-established  laws  of  society  ?  Or  to  those 
who  hear  in  the  warning  voice  of  the  religious 
instinct  a  power  that  shall  set  some  theory  of  hu- 
manitarian equality  in  place  of  the  old  evolutional 
reign  of  competition  ?  The  doctrines  of  Christ  if 
accepted  by  the  world  in  their  integrity, —  the 
virtues,  that  is,  of  humility,  non-resistance,  and 
poverty, — would  not  institute  any  such  desired 
revolution  in  society;  they  would  simply  make  an 
end  of  the  whole  social  fabric;  and  if  to  these 
chastity  be  added,  they  would  do  away  with 
human  existence  altogether.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
Christ,  according  to  the  overwhelming  evidence 
of  the  Gospels,  never  for  a  moment  contemplated 
the  introduction  of  a  religion  which  should  rebuild 
society.  His  kingdom  was  not  of  this  world,  and 
there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  he  looked  to 
see  only  a  few  chosen  souls  follow  in  his  footsteps. 
He  declares  of  himself  that  he  was  sent  only  to 
the  lost  sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel;  and  when  he 
sent  forth  the  twelve,  he  commanded  them  to  go 
not  into  the  way  of  the  Gentiles  and  not  to  enter 
any  city  of  the  Samaritans.  The  world  at  large 
was  to  him  a  wicked  and  adulterous  generation, 
moving  toward  the  consummation  of  its  sin;  "  for 
wide  is  the  gate,  and  broad  is  the  way,  that  leadeth 


244  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

to  destruction,  and  man}'  there  be  which  go  in 
thereat."  Out  of  this  habitation  of  wickedness 
he  called  his  disciples  to  leave  their  nets  or  their 
seat  at  the  receipt  of  custom,  and  to  abandon  (if 
necessary  even  to  hate)  father  and  mother  and 
every  earthly  tie;  they  were  to  leave  all  and  make 
themselves  ready  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  We 
are  told,  you  repl}',  that  he  bade  his  disciples  to 
go  into  all  the  world  and  preach  the  Gospel. 
This  is  true,  but  the  words  are  so  manifestly  in 
disaccord  with  the  whole  tenor  of  Christ's  life  and 
teaching  that  the  passage  may  be  strongly  sus- 
pected to  be  of  later  origin.  And,  granting  that 
the  words  are  authentic,  they  still  detract  nothing 
from  the  present  argument;  for  in  the  Gospel  of 
Matthew  where  the  same  command  is  repeated 
there  follows  immediately  that  lurid  account  of 
the  sin  and  desolation  of  the  world  whose  ruin  is 
only  delayed  until  the  unheeded  Gospel  has  been 
carried  abroad.  Although  this  particular  picture 
of  the  final  catastrophe  is  in  the  record  inextricablv 
confused  with  an  ex-post-fado  prophecy  of  the  fall 
of  Jerusalem,  yet  there  can  be  little  doubt,  from 
tradition  and  from  the  early  and  universal  belief 
of  the  Church,  that  Christ  looked  for  the  speedy 
destruction  of  the  world.  Out  of  the  consumma- 
tion of  wickedness  which  was  to  call  down  a  gen- 
eral curse  on  the  race,  some  few  faithful  believers, 
like  Noah  and  his  family  at  the  time  of  the  Flood, 
were  to  be  saved  and  gathered  into  the  kingdom 
of  heaven.     The  prophecy  is  quite  clear,  however 


HUMANITARIANISM  245 

much  prejudice  may  have  sought  to  pervert  its 
meaning:  "  Verily  I  say  unto  you,  That  there  be 
some  of  them  that  stand  here,  which  shall  not 
taste  of  death,  till  they  have  seen  the  kingdom  of 
God  come  into  power."  He  nowhere  intimates 
that  the  law  and  custom  of  the  world  can  be 
changed;  he  accepts  these  things  as  necessary  to 
the  social  system.  He  rebukes  the  Pharisees  for 
their  hypocrisy  in  religion,  but  never  speaks 
against  the  power  of  civil  authority.  "  Ye  know," 
he  says,  "  that  they  which  are  accounted  to  rule 
over  the  Gentiles  exercise  lordship  over  them; 
and  their  great  ones  exercise  authority  upon 
them.  But  so  shall  it  not  be  among  you:  but 
whosoever  will  be  great  among  you,  shall  be  your 
minister  {i.  e.,  servant)."  Not  a  word  falls  from 
his  lips  to  indicate  that  slavery  should  be  abol- 
ished, or  the  hierarchy  of  government  disturbed. 
When  the  disciples  question  him  about  the  paying 
of  taxes,  he  bids  them  pay  what  is  demanded,  not 
because  they  themselves  are  in  any  way  a  part  of 
the  civil  order,  but  because  he  is  unwilling  to  give 
offence.  And  again  when  tempted  by  the  Phari- 
sees he  replies  in  those  ringing  words:  "  Render 
to  Csesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's,  and  to  God 
the  things  that  are  God's."  There  is  something 
of  peculiar  pathos  in  the  story  of  the  rich  young 
man  whom  Jesus  loved  and  to  whom  he  pointed 
out  more  clearly  than  to  any  other  this  fixed  gulf 
between  the  ideals  of  the  world  and  of  religion. 
All  the  virtues  of  the  world  the  zealous  inquirer 


246  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

had  observed,  yet  one  thing  was  wanting;  and 
still  to-day  as  we  read  the  story  we  can  almost 
hear  the  reluctance  and  pity  in  Jesus'  voice,  as  he 
bade  the  young  man  look  to  another  and  sterner 
law  of  renunciation  if  he  would  be  perfect.  The 
gist  of  the  whole  matter  is  contained  in  those  two 
pithy  sayings:  My  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world, 
and,  Ye  cannot  serve  God  and  mammon. 

In  this  point  again  we  find  Buddhism  and 
Christianity  in  accord,  except  that  what  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  Gospels  more  or  less  vaguely  is  in 
the  Pali  books  ordained  with  rigorous  precision. 
The  believers  in  India  were  divided  into  two  dis- 
tinct classes:  those  who  formed  the  sanga,  or 
church  properl)^  speaking,  and  who,  looking  to 
Nirvana  as  their  goal,  accepted  the  religious  life 
as  we  have  described  it;  and  those  who  acknow- 
ledged the  higher  ideal  but  chose  rather  to  seek 
their  reward  in  a  heaven  of  prolonged  but  not 
eternal  happiness.  These  latter  remained  in  the 
world  as  merchants  or  soldiers  or  rulers,  and  their 
adherence  to  the  faith  was  particularly  marked  by 
dd7ia,  or  liberal  giving, — a  virtue  of  supreme  im- 
portance where  the  true  disciples  depended  entirely 
on  charity  for  their  support.  Buddha,  even  more 
clearly  than  Christ,  recognised  and  taught  the 
evil  and  insufficiency  of  human  societj^;  and  he 
saw  also,  as  did  Christ,  that  the  religious  instinct, 
if  followed  out,  must  result  in  the  utter  abrogation 
of  that  society  and  not  in  any  practical  alteration 
of  its  laws. 


HUMANITARIANISM  247 

Yet  because  the  religious  inspiration  and  virtues 
avert  their  face  from  this  world,  it  does  not  follow 
that  the  law  of  competition  reigns  among  men 
without  restriction  or  alleviation,  or  that  human 
society  is  left  wholly  to  the  ravening  of  wolfish 
and  tigerish  desires.  The  world  has  its  code  of 
ethics  as  well  as  the  spirit.  First  of  all  the  pro- 
hibitive commands  are  universally  binding:  Thou 
shalt  not  kill.  Thou  shalt  not  steal,  etc.  And  far 
above  these  stands  the  guiding  principle  of  char- 
acter, corresponding  to  the  aspiration  of  the  spirit 
but  concerned  with  that  lower  personality  which 
buys  and  sells,  marries  and  gives  in  marriage,  and 
looks  to  earthly  success  as  its  reward.  And  this 
principle  of  character  shows  itself  under  three 
manifestations  in  the  same  way  as  the  law  of  the 
spirit.  As  faith  is  the  act  of  discriminating  be- 
tween the  things  of  the  body  and  the  things  of 
the  spirit,  so  prudence,  or  worldly  wisdom,  (the 
Platonic  ffocpia  would  better  convey  the  mean- 
ing,) is  the  faculty  of  discerning  the  relative 
values  of  the  things  of  this  earth.  As  hope  is 
the  joy  and  persistence  of  faith,  so  courage  is 
that  which  leads  a  man  to  follow  diligently  the 
dictates  of  prudence;  it  is  the  joy  and  strength  of 
secular  activity,  for  no  man  without  courage  ever 
won  the  prize  of  success,  or  winning  it  held  it  in 
gladness.  And  as  love  is  the  flower  of  faith  and 
hope,  the  faculty  of  the  spirit  that  reaches  down 
and  gives  vitality  to  the  religious  virtues,  so 
honour  is  the  flower  of  prudence  and  courage,  the 


248  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

guiding  principle  through  the  intricate  demands 
of  worldly  uprightness. 

Now    these    three  —  prudence,    courage,    and 
honour, — like  their  spiritual  congeners,  are  not 
specific  virtues  touching  the  relation  of  man  to 
man,  but  affect  rather  the  integrity  of  a  man's 
character  itself.     Between  these  and  the  prohibi- 
tive commands  lie  the  social  virtues  of  the  secular 
life,  which  are  curiously  similar  to  the  religious 
virtues,  yet  perfectly  distinct  from  them.     In  place 
of  humility,  or  self-abnegation,  which  abjures  the 
desires  and  contentions  of  life  altogether,  stands 
justice  in  its  stricter  acceptance,— justice  which 
implies  the  wish  to  attain  for  oneself  and  to  allow 
to  all  others  what  the  ability  and  energy  and  in- 
dustry of  each  merit.     For  non-resistance  we  have 
the  civil  virtue  of  mercy,  which  does  not  abrogate 
justice  or  claim  for  the  weak  what  is  due  to  the 
strong,  but  softens  its  asperities  by  recognising 
that  after  all  human  judgment  is  liable  to  err  and 
that  where  doubts  arise  it  is  magnanimous  to  sur- 
render  somewhat  to   the   less   fortunate.     It  is, 
strictly  considered,  an  extension  of  justice  as  non- 
resistance   is   an   extension   of  humility.     So  in 
place  of  poverty  we  should  have  charity  in  its 
limited  sense  of  liberal  giving;  and  in  place  of 
chastity,    temperance    and    faithfulness.      These 
four— justice,  mercy,  charity,  and  temperance — 
are  positive  in  their  effect  and  supplement  the 
mere  prohibitions  of  universal  morality;  but  they 
are  not  religious  and  they  do  not  spring  from  the 


HUMANITARIANISM  249 

religious  instinct,  neither  do  they  in  any  sense 
controvert,  however  much  they  may  mitigate,  the 
law  of  competition  which  governs  the  material 
world. 

By  rigbt  or  wrong, 

Lands  and  goods  go  to  the  strong. 

Property  will  brutely  draw 

Still  to  the  proprietor; 

Silver  to  silver  creep  and  wind, 

And  kind  to  kind. 

They  are,  in  brief,  the  logical  working  out  of  that 
precept  of  Apollo,  Nothing  too  much,  which  as  de- 
veloped by  Aristotle  and  others  has  always  been 
and  must  always  remain  the  acting  rule  of  human 
society.  If,  in  distinction  to  this  command  of 
Apollo,  we  should  wish  to  express  briefly  the  ideal 
of  religious  virtue,  we  could  not  do  better  than 
repeat  the  words  of  the  hnitation  :  "  Tene  breve 
et  consummatum  verbum:  Dimitte  omnia,  et  in- 
venies  omnia;  relinqiie  cupidinem,  et  reperies  re- 
quiem,"— Put  away  all  things  and  thou  shaltfind 
all  things,  abandon  desire  and  thou  shalt  attain 
peace. 

If  you  ask  whence  arises  the  widespread  belief 
that  the  old  order  of  things  is  to  pass  away  and  a 
new  reign  of  humanitarianism  to  be  introduced, 
the  answer  is  ready  to  hand:  it  arises  from  that 
inexhaustible  source  of  error,  the  failure  to  dis- 
cern distinctions.  It  is  the  good  fortune  of  Mr. 
Mallock    to   have   set    forth   the   nature   of  this 


250  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

confusion  of  socialistic  ideas  in  the  economic  field. 
He  has  discriminated  clearly  between  the  phe- 
nomena of  social  aggregates  considered  as  wholes 
on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  hand  the  prob- 
lems which  arise  out  of  the  conflict  of  different 
parts  within  these  aggregates.  The  progress  of 
mankind  as  a  race  is  the  slow  process  of  evolution 
caused  by  the  survival  of  the  fittest;  the  rapid 
progress  of  any  particular  aggregate  is  due  to  the 
directive  activity  of  the  "great  men  "  within  that 
aggregate  working  through  the  law  of  compe- 
tition. Justice  and  the  general  welfare  demand 
that  the  "great  man  "  receive  his  proper  material 
reward.  The  introduction  of  the  idea  of  humanity 
as  a  whole  into  problems  of  this  second  order  has 
brought  about  the  wild  and  mischievous  notions 
of  humanitarian  economy  now  so  prevalent.  The 
laws  of  society  are  fixed,  and  no  amount  of  senti- 
mental yearning  will  alter  their  nature;  although 
it  may  very  well  create  infinite  distrust  and  class- 
hatred. 

The  religious  ground  of  humanitarianism  is  a 
like  failure  to  observe  distinctions, — a  failure  here 
to  discriminate  between  the  ideals  of  religion  and 
the  ideals  of  the  world.  To  apply  the  laws  of  the 
spirit  to  the  activities  of  this  earth  is  at  once  a 
desecration  and  denial  of  religion  and  a  bewilder- 
ing and  unsettling  of  the  social  order.  To  intrude 
the  aspirations  of  faith  and  hope  and  the  ethics  of 
the  golden  rule  of  love  into  regions  where  prudence 
and  courage  and  the  dictates  of  honour  are  su- 


HUMANITARIANISM  25 1 

preme,  is  a  mischievous  folly.  Failure  to  dis- 
criminate between  the  virtues  that  spring  from 
these  ideals,  or  any  attempt  to  amalgamate  the 
religious  virtues  and  the  secular  virtues,  to  con- 
fuse humility  with  justice,  non-resistance  with 
mercy,  poverty  with  liberality,  chastity  with  tem- 
perance,— such  blindness  is  equally  absurd  and 
vastly  more  dangerous.  Humauitarianism  is  just 
this  vague  sentimentality  of  a  mind  that  refuses 
to  distinguish  between  the  golden  rule  and  the 
precept  of  Apollo.  There  are  gross  and  manifest 
evils  in  the  actual  working  of  the  law  of  compe- 
tition, no  one  denies  that.  But  they  are  to  be  set 
right,  if  right  is  possible  in  this  world,  by  a  clearer 
understanding  and  a  more  faithful  observance  of 
the  worldly  virtues,  and  not  by  the  sickly  yearn- 
ings of  sentimentalists.  It  is  still  well  that  we 
render  to  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's  and 
to  God  the  things  that  are  God's. 

For  society  at  large  the  problem  is  an  easy  one; 
society  as  a  whole  has  nothing  to  do  with  God 
and  everything  to  do  with  Caesar.  Indeed,  as  the 
economic  fallacy  of  socialism  springs  from  apply- 
ing the  laws  of  humanity  as  a  whole  to  any  par- 
ticular aggregate  of  men;  so  the  religious  fallacy 
is  an  application  of  the  problem  of  the  individual 
to  such  an  aggregate  of  men.  But  for  the  indi- 
vidual, in  whose  heart  the  religious  instinct  nuir- 
murs  and  to  whom  at  the  same  time  the  voice  of 
the  world  may  speak  with  equal  weight,  the 
question  is  not  always  so  simple.     When  faith 


252  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

was  strong  among  men,  as  it  was  for  example  in 
the  days  of  St.  Francis,  he  found  it  not  difficult 
perhaps  to  walk  bravely  in  his  chosen  path.  So- 
ciety was  divided  pretty  sharply  into  those  who 
followed  the  law  of  renunciation  and  those  who 
followed  the  law  of  ambition,  and  any  attempt  to 
confuse  these  two  laws  would  have  awakened  dis- 
quiet and  condemnation.  So  it  was  that  for  St. 
Francis  himself,  when  the  vision  of  peace  came, 
it  was  not  so  hard,  we  may  suppose,  to  see  his 
way  perfectly  clear  before  him.  But  in  other 
days  when  faith  grows  a  little  dull  and  the  all- 
levelling  power  of  democracy  has  brought  things 
spiritual  and  things  worldly  to  the  same  plane, — 
or  so  at  least  it  looks  to  the  eyes  of  men,— in  such 
days  the  path  of  the  individual  is  beset  with  diffi- 
culties. The  man  of  the  world  is  troubled  at 
times  by  a  voice  that  calls  upon  him  to  renounce: 
and  on  the  other  side  it  is  still  harder,  if  not  im- 
pos.sible,  to  follow  the  religious  life  in  its  simplicity 
and  purity.  What  shall  be  said  to  the  troubled 
soul  in  whose  confused  hearing  the  voices  of  the 
world  and  the  spirit  are  mingled,  dragging  him 
now  this  way  and  now  that  ?  I  know  not  unless 
it  be  in  the  quaint  metaphor  of  Emerson,  which  I 
have  already  quoted  in  an  earlier  essay: 

One  key,  one  solution  to  the  mysteries  of  human 
condition,  one  solution  to  the  old  knots  of  fate,  freedom 
and  foreknowledge,  exists,  the  propounding,  namely,  of 
the  double  consciousness.  A  man  must  ride  alternately 
on  the  horses  of  his  private  and  his  public  nature,  as  the 


HUMANITARIANISM  253 

equestrians  in  the  circus  throw  themselves  nimbly  from 
horse  to  horse,  or  plant  one  foot  on  the  back  of  one  and 
the  other  foot  on  the  back  of  the  other. 

Such  a  double  life  he  must  lead,  balancing  be- 
tween the  two  laws,  but  above  all  things  taking 
care  not  to  confuse  the  regions  in  which  these 
laws  are  valid  or  to  lose  the  distinction  between 
his  public  and  his  private  duty.  To  lose  such  a 
distinction  is  to  fall  forthwith  into  the  shadows 
of  hypocrisy  and  charlatanry;  to  maintain  it  ever 
before  the  inner  eye  and  to  judge  honestly  between 
the  conflict  of  claims  is  the  great  problem  which 
is  left  to  the  conscience  of  each  man  and  to  him 
alone. 

THE  END 


Works  in  Literature 


American  Literature,  1607-1885 

By  Prof.  Charles  F.  Richardson 

Dartmouth  College 
Part  I.     The  Development  of  American  Thought. 
Part  II.     American  Poetry  and  Fiction.     Popular  Edition.     2  vols, 
in  one  octavo,  $3.50. 
"A  new  edition  of  Mr.  Richardson's  fine  work  is  a  proof  that  it  is 
admired  and  trusted  by  its  public.     .      .      .     Somethine  is  said,  carefully 
and  critically,  of  all  the  poets  and  prose  writers  that   nave  been  worth 
mentioning  in  the  last  two  or  three  centuries." — Philadelphia  Bulletin. 

A  History  of  American  Literature 

By  P.  Moses  Coit  Tyler 

Professor  of  American  History,  Cornell  University. 
Colonial  Period.     1606-1765.     Students'  Edition.     Octavo,  $3.00. 
The  American  Revolution,  1763-1783.     Students'  Edition.     Octavo, 
$3.00. 
"A  history  of  American   Literature  ample,  exact,  and  highly  enter- 
taining.     To     Professor     Tyler    every    one    seriously    concerned  about 
American  literature  must  go.      He  is  loyal  to  the  past  of  his  country; 
and  even  the  errors  of  loyalty  have  something  in  them  from  which  we 
may  learn." — Edward  Dowden,  in  The  Academy. 

A  Literary  History  of  the  English  People 

From  the  Earliest  Times  to  the  Present  Day. 
By  J.  J.  Jusserand 

French   Ambassador  to  the  United  States.     Author  of  "The  English 

Novel  in  the  Time  of  Shakespeare,"  etc. 
Vol.  I.      From    the    Origins    to    the    Renaissance.    Octavo,     with 

Frontispiece,  net,  $3.50. 
Vol.  II.     Part  1.     From   the    Renaissance   to   the    Civil    'War. 
Octavo,  with  Frontispiece,  net,  53-5o. 

In  Preparation 
Vol.  II.     Part  2.     From  the  Civil  War  to  Pope. 

"Mr.  Jusserand's  qunlificatlons  for  the  task  which  he  has  undertaken 
are  of  a  high  order.  There  are  few  foreigners,  and  certainly  very  few 
Frenchmen,  who  have  so  intimate  a  knowledge  of  English  life;  he  has 
already  gained  great  distinction  as  an  original  investigator  in  more  than 
one  period  of  English  literary  history;  and  although  his  point  of  view  in 
the  present  work  is  unmistakably  that  of  a  Frenchman,  he  shows  a  degree 
of  sympathetic  insight  which  is  seldom  met  with  in  foreign  critics  of  lit- 
erature."— London  Athenautn, 

A  History  of  Comparative  Literature 

By  Frederick  Loliee 

Authorized  Translation  by  M.  A.  Power,  M.D.  8°.  Net,  $1.75 
A  brief  but  luminous  survey  of  an  immense  subject,  tracing  out  clearly 
the  origin,  the  progress,  and  the  interdependence  of  the  world's  literary 
developments.  M.  Loliee  steers  his  way  with  consummate  skill  between 
generalization  and  detail,  and  his  critical  summaries  are  as  suggestive  as 
they  are  succinct. 


NEW  YORK    G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS    london 


Shelburne  Essays 

By  Paul  Elmer  More 

6  vols.     Crown  octavo. 

Each,  net,  $1.25.     (By  mail,  $1.35) 

Contents 

First  Series  :  A  Hermit's  Notes  on  Thoreau — The  Soli- 
tude  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  —  The  Origins  of  Haw- 
thorne and  Poe — The  Influence  of  Emerson — The  Spirit 
of  Carlyle  —  The  Science  of  English  Verse  —  Arthur 
Symons  :  The  Two  Illusions — The  Epic  of  Ireland — 
Two  Poets  of  the  Irish  Movement — Tolstoy ;  or,  The 
Ancient  Feud  between  Philosophy  and  Art  —  The  Re- 
ligious Ground  of  Humanitarianism. 

Second  Series  :  Elizabethan  Sonnets — Shakespeare's  Son- 
nets— Lafcadio  Hearn — The  First  Complete  Edition  of 
Hazlitt  —  Charles  I.amb — Kipling  and  FitzGerald  — 
George  Crabbe  —  The  Novels  of  George  Meredith  — 
Hawthorne:  Looking  before  and  after — Delphi  and 
Greek  Literature — Nemesis  :  or,  The  Divine  Envy. 

Third  Series  :  The  Correspondence  of  William  Cowper — 
Whittier  the  Poet — The  Centenary  of  Sainte-Beuve — 
The  Scotch  Novels  and  Scotch  History — Swinburne — 
Christina  Rossetti — Why  is  Browning  Popular? — A  Note 
on  Byron's  "Don  Juan" — Laurence  Sterne — J.  Henry 
Shorthouse — The  Quest. 

Fourth  Series  :  The  Vicar  of  Morwenstow — Fanny  Bur- 
ney — A  Note  on  "  Daddy"  Crisp — George  Herbert — John 
Keats — Benjamin  Franklin — Charles  Lamb  Again — Walt 
Whitman — William  Blake — The  Theme  of  Paradise  Lost 
— The  Letters  of  Horace  Walpole. 

Fifth  Series  :  The  Greek  Anthology  —  The  Praise  of 
Dickens — George  Gissing — Mrs.  Gaskell — Philip  Freneau 
— Thoreau's  Journal — The  Centenary  of  Longfellow — ■ 
Donald  G.  Mitchell— James  Thomson  ("  B.  V.")-Ches. 
terfield — Sir  Henry  Wotton. 

Sixth  Series  \Studies  of  Religious  Dualism^'.  The  Forest 
Philosophy  of  India  —  The  Bhagavad  Gita  —  Saint 
Augustine — Pascal — Sir  Thomas  Browne — Bunyan— 
Rousseau — Socrates — The  Apology — Plato. 


A  Few  Press  Criticisms  on 
Shelburne  Essays 

"  It  is  a  pleasure  to  hail  in  Mr.  More  a  genuine  critic,  fot 
genuine  critics  in  America  in  these  days  are  uncommonly 
scarce.  .  .  .  We  recommend,  as  a  sample  of  his  breadth, 
style,  acumen,  and  power  the  essay  on  Tolstoy  in  the  present 
volume.  That  represents  criticism  that  has  not  merely 
a  metropolitan  but  a  world  note.  .  .  .  One  is  thoroughly 
grateful  to  Mr.  More  for  the  high  quality  of  his  thought,  his 
serious  purpose,  and  his  excellent  style." — Harvard  Gradu- 
ates^ Magazitii. 

"  We  do  not  know  of  any  one  now  writing  who  gives 
evidence  of  a  better  critical  equipment  than  Mr.  More.  It 
is  rare  nowadays  to  find  a  writer  so  thoroughly  familiar  with 
both  ancient  and  modern  thought.  It  is  this  width  of  view, 
this  intimate  acquaintance  with  so  much  of  the  best  that  has 
been  thought  and  said  in  the  world,  irrespective  of  local 
prejudice,  that  constitute  Mr.  More's  strength  as  a  critic. 
He  has  been  able  to  form  for  himself  a  sound  literary  canon 
and  a  sane  philosophy  of  life  which  constitute  to  our  mind 
his  peculiar  merit  as  a  critic.*' — Itidepetident. 

"  He  is  familiar  with  classical.  Oriental,  and  English 
literature ;  he  uses  a  temperate,  lucid,  weighty^  and  not 
ungraceful  style ;  he  is  aware  of  his  best  predecessors,  and  is 
apparently  on  the  way  to  a  set  of  philosophic  principles 
which  should  lead  him  to  a  high  and  perhaps  influential 
place  in  criticism.  .  .  .  We  believe  that  we  are  in  the 
presence  of  a  critic  who  must  be  counted  among  the  first  who 
take  literature  and  life  for  their  theme." — London  Speaker^ 


G.    P.   Putnam's  Sons 
New  York  London 


Works  in  Literature 


Books  and  Their  Makers  During  the  Middle  A^es 

A  Study  of  the  Conditions  of  the  Production  and  Distribution  of 

Literature  from  the  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  to  the 

Close  of  the  Seventeenth  Century 

By  GEO.  HAVEN  PUTNAM,  LItt.D. 

In  two  volumes,  8vo,  cloth  extra  (sold  separately),  each  $2.50 

Vol.  I.    476-1600  Vol.  II.     1500-1709 

"  It  is  seldom  that  such  wide  learning,  such  historical  grasp  and  insight, 
have  been  employed  in  their  service." — Atlantic  Monthly. 

Authors  and  Publishers 

A  MANUAL  OF  SUGGESTIONS  FOR  BEGINNERS  IN 
LITERATURE 
Comprising  a  description  of  publishing  methods  and  arrange- 
ments, directions  for  the  preparation  of  manuscript  for  the 
press,  explanations  of  the  details  of  book-manufacturing,  in- 
structions for  proof-reading,  specimens  of  typography,  the 
text  of  the  United  States  Copyright  Law,  and  information 
concerning  International  Copyrights,  together  with  general 
hints  for  authors. 

By  Q.  H.  P.  and  J.  B.  P. 
Seventh  Edition,  re-written  with  additional  material. 
8vo,  gilt  top,  net,  $1.75 
"  This    handy  and   useful  book  is  written  with  perfect  fairness  and 
abounds  in  hints  which  writers  will  do  well  to  '  make  a  note  of.'     . 
There  is  a  host  of  other  matters  treated  succinctly  and  lucidly  which  it 
behooves  beginners  in  literature  to  know,  and  we  can  recommend  it  most 
heartily  to  them." — London  Spectator. 

Authors  and  Their  Public  in  Ancient  Times 

A  Sketch  of  Literary  Conditions  and  of  the  Relations  with  the 

Public  of  Literary  Producers,  from  the  Earliest  Times 

to  the  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire 

By  QEO.  HAVEN  PUTNAM,  Litt.D. 

Author  of  "The  Question  of  Copyright,"  "  Books  and  their  Makers 
During  the  Middle  Ages,"  etc. 
Second  Edition,  Revised,  i2mo,  gilt  top,  $1.50 
"The  work  shows  broad  cultivation,  careful  scholarly  research,  and 
original  thought.     The  style  is  simple  and  straightforward,  and  the  vol- 
ume is  both  attractive  and  valuable." — Richmond  Times. 

The  Censorship  of    the  Church  of   Rome  and  Its 

Influence  upon  the  Production  and  the 

Distribution  of  Literature 

A    Study  of  the  History  of  the   Prohibitory    and   Expurgatory 

Indexes,  together  •w\X\\  some  Consideration  of  the  Effects  of 

Protestant  Censorship  and  of  Censorship  by  the  State 

By  GEO.  HAVEN  PUTNAM,  LUt.D. 

Two  volumes.  8vo.  Uniform  with  "Books  and  Their  Makers." 
Per  volume,  net,  $2.50 
"  A  work  of  remarkable  erudition.  .  ._  .  I  find  it  characterized  by 
rare  large-mindedness  and  historic  impartiality.  .  .  .  The  subject  is 
one  into  which  few  writers  have  had  the  courage  to  delve.  The  book 
should  prove  of  much  interest  to  scholars.  .  .  .  The  subject  has  been 
treated  in  a  masterly  manner." — John  Ireland,  Archbishop  0/ Minnesota. 

New  York         G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS         London 


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